Grunt221 said

  

Looks like a damned fine hog gun! I used to hang out with a colorful bunch of guys and a meeting of our little club wasn’t official until someone said “you can’t have too many hog guns”. I suspect we all tested that theory and I still keep one or two around.

Mike

steve004 said
I’ll just throw this out there as an idea in a very different direction.  I’ve seen a variety of rifles in different conditions where the owner has broke it down, sold the parts and sometimes received more total than if they had sold the complete rifle.  

  

Bite your tongue. Any 1886 cannot be valued in money alone. 

Then there is the numberless receiver to consider….

Grunt221 said
I really don’t plan on shooting this one much. I’ll just toss it behind the seat. I venture out to the hills quite often. I’m really attached to my 40-65 26”. It was the same kind of project, but much better looking when I was finished.

  

Seems this would make a fine truck gun.  .45-70 is a great choice.  And I recall you mentioned it functions reliably.  

I was giving more thought about the potential dilemmas we discussed in selling it.  Maybe it’s not that complicated.  While we can’t say for sure if it has antique status or not, we know for sure that it was made before guns were required to have serial numbers.  This doesn’t mean you take a gun made prior to 1968 and grind the serial number off.  However, that is not what happened here – the serial number on your rifle was not removed, defaced, etc.  And that is obviously the case when the lower tang is examined.  

When guns are sold and transferred to receiving dealers, those dealers will readily book in a rifle that has no serial number if it was made prior to the gun control act.  They would likely have an issue if the rifle had the serial number ground off but as I stated, that is not the case here.