selling a wall-hanger at home & garden show

[OH_Spartan]

I went to a gun show today and, for kicks, I pulled an old wall-hanger, R. Hughes double barrel out of the safe to take with me.

One of the booths wasn't intrested in paying cash and didn't have anything I was interested in on trade. As I walked away, he told me I was trying to sell it at the wrong place He said wall-hangers sell best and home & garden shows and recommended I put orange caps in it and sell/trade it as home decor.

Has anyone ever done this? Are there any legal pitfalls with this? Assuming it is on the up and up, my wife would be very interested in this....trading value in my hobby for value in hers (I mean ours ), where would I get 12 ga orange caps?

 

[Malachi Leviticus Blue]

I'm guessing that the old wall hanger is actually capable of firing, albeit potentially unsafely. If so, I would not even consider putting an orange cap on it.

 

[Burt Blade]

Keep in mind, it is still a gun. You need to keep the gun assorted laws in mind. Just because you glue a plug in the chamber and/or muzzle, it is still legally a firearm unless deactivated in a process approved by the relevant government agencies.

 

[FIVETWOSEVEN]

I'm assuming that it's a Blackpowder shotgun. If it is then it's federally considered as a non firearm. Most states go along with that law. What state do you live in and is it a muzzleloading shotgun?

 

[OH_Spartan]

yes it is a muzzleloading shot gun and it is clearly a wall hanger. the tip of the barrel is split and the nipples are clogged and only one hammer will cock

I am in Ohio

 

[RetroMan]

Gun law advice at a home & garden show ?

 

[scrat]

$2.00 or maybe a little more. go to hardware store buy a small bag of redimix cement. make some pour about 1/2 cup down each barrel then use a ramrod or something to push it down. when it drys it will be totally legal.

When i was a kid i remember the local american legion had a howitzer in the front. it was pretty cool we used to climb on it all the time. the screws to adjust it had cement or concrete actually on them and if you looked down the barrel it was probably 1/4 filled with cement or concrete. amazingly the breech was still in place. i guess it was ok though because it was cemented in place. Ok quiz time.

whats the difference between cement and concrete.



answer you pour cement it solidifies into concrete

 

[Hellgate]

Scrat,
I thought the difference was cement is the binder into which you mix the sand or gravel to make concrete. My engineer father in law would correct us if we called concrete cement. He would see an concrete road breaking up and comment that the contractor/road builder was skimpy on the amount of cement he used to mix the concrete.

 

[tom e gun]

do you have any pictures of this wallhanger? i like checking out some of these ol' boomsticks

 

[arcticap]

If the gun show vendor was willing to trade then perhaps you weren't in the wrong place at all. That one vendor simply didn't want to offer the cash for it.
A possible pitfall with taking it to a home & garden show is that the sponsor may not allow you to bring the gun inside whether it's plugged or not, or is a wall hanger or not.
You could contact the sponsor of the show beforehand, or maybe leave the gun in the car and ask at the door if it's okay to bring it in.
Selling it as decor may not bring the same amount of money as an antique gun collector would offer. And there's antique gun vendors that specialize in wall hangers. That doesn't mean that they will pay much, but it may be more than what you would receive at a home and garden show.
Antique gun shows usually have a lot more old antique guns and wall hangers for sale. That is unless the regular gun shows that you go to have some antique gun vendors that attend.
The bottom line is that I wouldn't plug it before knowing whether I could bring it into the homer & garden show or not. Doing that could lower it's value to an antique gun vendor as an antique firearm, despite however low it's value is to begin with. Although it might be worth taking it to the home & garden show, maybe it doesn't even need to be plugged to sell it there. But that might also depend on the location.

 

[crazyjennyblack]

arcticap "homer & garden show"

I've never seen one of these... but here's a pic of a Homer garden of some kind anyway...

(some things are just funnier at 2am)

 

[mykeal]

ce·ment/siˈment/
Noun:
A powdery substance made by calcining lime and clay, mixed with water to form mortar or mixed with sand, gravel, and water to make concrete.

You can pour concrete, for a while.

 

[StrawHat]

Sometimes those Interior decorators will pay a lot for a wall hanger because they sell it for even more than they paid for it.

Cement in the barrels? Why not restore the old gun to using condition and go after pheasant or ducks with it? There are more than a couple of good antiques still in use.

 

[tom e gun]

make it into a howdah pistol!

 

[GCBurner]

Sell it to Cracker Barrel, all their restaurants have an old wall hanger shotgun over the fireplace in their dining room.

 

[OH_Spartan]

I've been away on business for a few days and just getting caught upon the THR chatter.

This has been a good discussion. I think I will hold off on putting concrete in the barrel unless a buyer wants me to do that as part of a "value added" transaction.

I will try to get some pics posted this weekend.

To the sub-topic of concrete/cement, mykeal has it right. As a Chemical Engineer in real life, I have come to ignore the interchangeability of both of them the same way I don't cringe when someone says clip vs. magazine. When I worked in the concrete industry for a couple years, we had a much more defining technical term.....we called it all mud.

 

[CraigC]

A powdery substance made by calcining lime and clay, mixed with water to form mortar or mixed with sand, gravel, and water to make concrete.

Yep, sorry scrat. I've seen worse than the cement/concrete mixup. Heard a reporter once refer to the contents of a concrete truck as "grout".

As for the OP, forget the orange caps and sell it as what it is. If it's a muzzleloading blackpowder shotgun, it's legally not considered a firearm. Whether functioning or not.