tkaction:
At one time, all guns were shipped with a couple of casings from a test-firing, due to some stupid State requirements here and there.... I'm not sure if this is still the situation or not, but I've run into more than one guy who got one that'd not been cleaned thereafter.
I doubt if anybody (gotta say "but High Point"
) ships one that's not been test fired a couple times. The cost of "recovery" - getting the gun back, fixing it, etc., is many times higher, I would think, than if you find out before it ships the first time. Still, I tell new buyers to put three round in each magazine and see what happens, safely, before loading up....
BTW, if the gun was test fired, that has nothing to do with the extra mags. However if you hang around "here" (or M1911.org, etc.) you'll run into guys who go ballistic because their brand new gun had been fired. Getting them to realize that the factory pretty much had to can be fun. They're not necessarily cleaned....
IMHO, if a semi's got less than about 100 rounds through it, most of us wouldn't be able to tell. (You can see it on some revolvers if the thing has been dry fired! The cylinder latch in the bottom of the frame wears a little groove in the cylinder real fast....) With a couple of exceptions (guns I'm
really familiar with), I know I couldn't.... I bought one a few years ago that was "old stock but NIB". It probably was - the grips were worn from contact with other guns on the shelf (he changed his storage methods since), and it was a little dirty (never cleaned after test firing), but other than a minor cosmetic defect, none of the usual wear point issues were present. Some of them are there now
....
Cosmetic defect: the cutter that puts the notch in the slide for the thumb safety hit the slide a couple times before it should have. Nasty, sharp edges that were a bear to beat down. I could have returned it, but this gun was sort of one-of-a-kind, in that the model was out of print, but otherwise exactly what I wanted. Finding another one may have taken longer than polishing down those burrs.... Was I the first non-dealer owner? Sure looks like it.... There's a pic of the Kimber slide with the extra notches at:
http://tinypic.com/f4422x.jpg.
Meantime, my buddy bought a not-quite-new EMP the other month. Apparently the original purchaser put a dozen or so round through it and decided he didn't want it. Or his wife found out
.... No way to tell, other than the price tag. It DID have a problem, btw. Tight chamber didn't like my buddy's reloads until he bought a new sizing die. Ran fine with my "you bought what?" stuff.... Former Glock casings show some unsupported areas in the case that bulge out a bit, and the EMP wouldn't feed 'em. His other 9mm didn't care.
And, yes, sometimes the presence of that second mag is a promotion.... If the outer packaging materials (sometimes not present) says "comes with two magazines", it's, well, a scam.... In my case, the deal I mentioned earlier was on the web site, and later confirmed by the dealer. He didn't have to....
Finally, a "warranty" story.... Many years ago, I was active on the old WordStar forum on CompuServe. One day we had a guy check in: "Your program WRECKED my printer!" (Bear in mind that everybody there was a volunteer or "civilian".)
After a bit of chat, we found out that whenever he'd print a WordStar document on a pre-printed form, the
form he'd been printing
on kept repeating on the next few pages.... Even more chatting later, we found out that he was creating the "forms" somehow, and then using a COPIER to make additional copies. When those ran through his laser printer, the toner from the copier had a different melting point, and would stick to the printer's rollers until it eventually wore off.... The laser printer's toner wouldn't do that.... It wore off by being transferred to the paper....
(Sam: This isn't a dig at you.... Just thought that if you were feeling a little confused, this'd give you a kick - there are always others out there who can usually beat you!)
Regards,
