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Commemorative guns honor Ocean history
COLORADO MAN SHOWS OFF FIRST 24-KARAT-GOLD RIFLE IN SERIES
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 04/19/06
BY KIRK MOORE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
Frozen in carved walnut, deer and wild turkey roam the Pine Barrens along with the latest returnee, the black bear.
Barnegat Lighthouse and the schooner Lucy Evelyn are etched in a background of glowing gold, along with a map of Ocean County — where rifles like this once staked both rich sportsmen and poor backwoods families to venison dinners.
Brian Nesby was showing his handiwork around Ocean County last week, bringing the latest in a series of commemorative rifles that his company, Rocky Mountain Firearms Inc., crafts for collectors with an appreciation for their hometown history.
Nesby's first model — the "proof" in gunsmith's terms — will be followed by 10 production pieces that will sell through local dealers for around $3,500. Nesby said that's in keeping with his longtime production and marketing practice to make only a few, one-time-only models themed around states' and counties' local histories.
"I bought 50 or 60 Winchester rifles the day one of my wholesalers told me they were going out of business," said Nesby, 45, of Fort Collins, Colo. His model is among the last of the venerable Winchester 1894 lever-action rifles to come out of the manufacturer's New Haven, Conn., factory.
For more than a century, the rifle design that moviegoers always asso-ciate with the Old West actually had a longer career as a favored arm among hunters, who use the '94 in various configurations.
Old hunting accounts from the Ocean County deer woods say lever-action carbines were common in the early 20th century, before state game laws required hunters to use shorter-range shotguns during deer season for safety reasons.
Nesby said his new Winchesters are chambered for the .45 caliber Colt cartridge — a popular load among cowboy action shooters, who use 19th-century gun designs in competition.
Not that you'd actually want to shoot one of these rifles.
"All the gold work you see is 24-karat gold, including the inside of the barrel. If anyone ever fires the gun, all of the gold is going to come out of the barrel — it's a very soft metal," Nesby said. The barrel is plated to ensure the display-only rifles won't corrode, he said.
Nesby said he's designed a lot of local-history rifles for locales in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where one dealer suggested he cross the Delaware River and look into some of New Jersey's interesting corners. Through libraries and the Internet, Nesby was intrigued by what he found.
On the rifle's stock, laser-carved inletting creates an image of Laurel-in-the-Pines, a grandiose Lakewood hotel pictured around 1891.
"It was one of the most awesome buildings I'd ever seen" and refers to both the county's pine forests and early tourism industry, Nesby said.
A U.S. Lifesaving Service beachfront station is pictured, along with the old Tucker's Island lighthouse, in wood (Barnegat Lighthouse is etched in the metal receiver).
Inside the doomed Toms River blockhouse, a militiaman beats a drum, warning of a fateful 1782 raid by Loyalist forces during the Revolutionary War.
A Central Railroad of New Jersey steam engine chugs through the countryside, flanked by insets of the local wildlife.
There's the black bear, namesake of many swamps and hills in the Pine Barrens, and now recently returned to the Ocean County woods where hunters are believed to have shot the last of its kind in the 1800s.
To research his designs, "I'll call the local historical societies and get a few books," Nesby said. Planning each edition takes about four months, and Rocky Mountain Firearms' artists work from source material to develop their own illustrations, he said.
Each rifle takes about six to eight weeks to complete, he said.
Collectors who buy such intensely local commemorative pieces should do so because they want the gun, and not assume they are buying it as an investment to eventually sell at a profit on the secondary market, said Joseph M. Cornell, a certified firearms appraiser in Denver and a member of the American Society of Appraisers.
"People who buy these want to display them in their homes and offices," Cornell said of commemorative firearms. Depending on rarity, age and the value of a gun, there can be "quite a bit of (market) interest" in nationally significant, low-production-run commemorative arms by major manufacturers, Cornell said.
But "value is all about market," and commemoratives tied to a small geographic area will have correspondingly less market appeal to collectors elsewhere, Cornell said.
Owners who try to sell commemoratives with narrow appeal to a bigger market can be surprised when they get offers substantially lower than their assumed value, he said.
On the other hand, Nesby pointed out these rifles are among the last production run to come out of the factory under Winchester ownership. And unlike some of that gunmaker's own commemoratives, they will remain few in number.
"Thirty years ago they had a corner on this market. But the bad thing they did was make too many," Nesby said "They'd sell out the first thousand rifles, and they'd say, "Hey, that sold pretty good. Let's make another thousand.' "
In a county with more than 500,000 people, Nesby thinks his rifles will find a fairly large audience. He's accustomed to selling in rural counties with populations one-tenth the size.
On one trip through Michigan, Nesby recalled, his last stop to sell commemorative rifles was in a little town of about 500 people. He found himself at the local gun dealer — the owner of the hardware store, "where he had a rifle, a shotgun and a .22 on the rack. He took me into the back, and we put my rifle on this beat-up old metal table," he said.
"Within an hour, he had seven guys in there, and they bought the rest of the guns."
Nesby said he's sold other commemoratives to long-lost Midwest natives, who live in other states now but still remember the woods of their childhood: "The strings to what home was are always there, even for people who have been gone 40 or 50 years."
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060419/NEWS02/604190425/1070/COMMUNITY
COLORADO MAN SHOWS OFF FIRST 24-KARAT-GOLD RIFLE IN SERIES
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 04/19/06
BY KIRK MOORE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU
Frozen in carved walnut, deer and wild turkey roam the Pine Barrens along with the latest returnee, the black bear.
Barnegat Lighthouse and the schooner Lucy Evelyn are etched in a background of glowing gold, along with a map of Ocean County — where rifles like this once staked both rich sportsmen and poor backwoods families to venison dinners.
Brian Nesby was showing his handiwork around Ocean County last week, bringing the latest in a series of commemorative rifles that his company, Rocky Mountain Firearms Inc., crafts for collectors with an appreciation for their hometown history.
Nesby's first model — the "proof" in gunsmith's terms — will be followed by 10 production pieces that will sell through local dealers for around $3,500. Nesby said that's in keeping with his longtime production and marketing practice to make only a few, one-time-only models themed around states' and counties' local histories.
"I bought 50 or 60 Winchester rifles the day one of my wholesalers told me they were going out of business," said Nesby, 45, of Fort Collins, Colo. His model is among the last of the venerable Winchester 1894 lever-action rifles to come out of the manufacturer's New Haven, Conn., factory.
For more than a century, the rifle design that moviegoers always asso-ciate with the Old West actually had a longer career as a favored arm among hunters, who use the '94 in various configurations.
Old hunting accounts from the Ocean County deer woods say lever-action carbines were common in the early 20th century, before state game laws required hunters to use shorter-range shotguns during deer season for safety reasons.
Nesby said his new Winchesters are chambered for the .45 caliber Colt cartridge — a popular load among cowboy action shooters, who use 19th-century gun designs in competition.
Not that you'd actually want to shoot one of these rifles.
"All the gold work you see is 24-karat gold, including the inside of the barrel. If anyone ever fires the gun, all of the gold is going to come out of the barrel — it's a very soft metal," Nesby said. The barrel is plated to ensure the display-only rifles won't corrode, he said.
Nesby said he's designed a lot of local-history rifles for locales in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where one dealer suggested he cross the Delaware River and look into some of New Jersey's interesting corners. Through libraries and the Internet, Nesby was intrigued by what he found.
On the rifle's stock, laser-carved inletting creates an image of Laurel-in-the-Pines, a grandiose Lakewood hotel pictured around 1891.
"It was one of the most awesome buildings I'd ever seen" and refers to both the county's pine forests and early tourism industry, Nesby said.
A U.S. Lifesaving Service beachfront station is pictured, along with the old Tucker's Island lighthouse, in wood (Barnegat Lighthouse is etched in the metal receiver).
Inside the doomed Toms River blockhouse, a militiaman beats a drum, warning of a fateful 1782 raid by Loyalist forces during the Revolutionary War.
A Central Railroad of New Jersey steam engine chugs through the countryside, flanked by insets of the local wildlife.
There's the black bear, namesake of many swamps and hills in the Pine Barrens, and now recently returned to the Ocean County woods where hunters are believed to have shot the last of its kind in the 1800s.
To research his designs, "I'll call the local historical societies and get a few books," Nesby said. Planning each edition takes about four months, and Rocky Mountain Firearms' artists work from source material to develop their own illustrations, he said.
Each rifle takes about six to eight weeks to complete, he said.
Collectors who buy such intensely local commemorative pieces should do so because they want the gun, and not assume they are buying it as an investment to eventually sell at a profit on the secondary market, said Joseph M. Cornell, a certified firearms appraiser in Denver and a member of the American Society of Appraisers.
"People who buy these want to display them in their homes and offices," Cornell said of commemorative firearms. Depending on rarity, age and the value of a gun, there can be "quite a bit of (market) interest" in nationally significant, low-production-run commemorative arms by major manufacturers, Cornell said.
But "value is all about market," and commemoratives tied to a small geographic area will have correspondingly less market appeal to collectors elsewhere, Cornell said.
Owners who try to sell commemoratives with narrow appeal to a bigger market can be surprised when they get offers substantially lower than their assumed value, he said.
On the other hand, Nesby pointed out these rifles are among the last production run to come out of the factory under Winchester ownership. And unlike some of that gunmaker's own commemoratives, they will remain few in number.
"Thirty years ago they had a corner on this market. But the bad thing they did was make too many," Nesby said "They'd sell out the first thousand rifles, and they'd say, "Hey, that sold pretty good. Let's make another thousand.' "
In a county with more than 500,000 people, Nesby thinks his rifles will find a fairly large audience. He's accustomed to selling in rural counties with populations one-tenth the size.
On one trip through Michigan, Nesby recalled, his last stop to sell commemorative rifles was in a little town of about 500 people. He found himself at the local gun dealer — the owner of the hardware store, "where he had a rifle, a shotgun and a .22 on the rack. He took me into the back, and we put my rifle on this beat-up old metal table," he said.
"Within an hour, he had seven guys in there, and they bought the rest of the guns."
Nesby said he's sold other commemoratives to long-lost Midwest natives, who live in other states now but still remember the woods of their childhood: "The strings to what home was are always there, even for people who have been gone 40 or 50 years."
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060419/NEWS02/604190425/1070/COMMUNITY
