Rick Hill said
Ben:

Congratulations on 42 years of marital bliss!  My wife Georgia and I will be celebrating our 60th 23 days from now and I too feel lucky and well blessed!

  

You and Georgia are both lucky… and blessed.  While we haven’t known each other very long, I have come to appreciate you and your perspective (guns & football).  Looking forward to Cody…

Blue Ridge Parson said

Maverick said

I don’t know how much of it but Lewis Yearout’s collection went through a fire. 

  

Lewis Yearout and his son Leyton jointly owned the firearms collection.  After Lewis’ death, all was in the hands of Leyton.  Leyton died at his home here in Montana in 2011 when a fire leveled his residence.  Many firearms were lost, as the fire department had to stand down because of the great amount of ammunition that was going off in the fire.  Some of the Yearout collection was at his place of business, but a great number of the rarest guns were lost in that house fire.

BRP

  

Yes, rumor has it, Leyton died of smoke inhalation trying to save his guns in that house fire. Very sad indeed.  Couldn’t imagine losing my entire collection, especially to fire, so I completely understand his motivation.  He just didn’t know when to give up and it ultimately costed him his his life…R.I.P.  Wondering how many of those guns lost are pictured in Madis’s Winchester Book.

https://www.schniderfuneralhome.com/obituary/leyton-yearout

Don

JWA said
After talking to the show promoters it seemed as if most of the empty table “no shows” were people from CA.  I had 4 empty tables next to me that belonged to a collector in CA that did not come because his house burned to the ground and destroyed most of what he was planning on bringing to Las Vegas.  Other CA tables were empty because people did not want to leave their houses with the threat of wildfires still in the area.  

I don’t know if that accounts for all the empty tables but probably a fair percentage of them this year.  Last year there were very few empty tables (if any) in the main room.

It was great seeing everyone there!  I even got to meet Ben’s beautiful wife.

Best Regards,

  

That didn’t occur to me even tho I’ve been living in a disaster zone for several months and can assure you the threat of looters is probably as great as the fire risk, probably greater in Commiefornia where folks seem to think fire and police protection is not necessary. My modest collection went to offsite secure storage within hours, our California collectors had few good options, sitting tight was probably the best option for most. 

Mike

I hear from Wayne Miller that Model 54 serial number 2 which was a .30Gov’t06 was lost in the Yearout fire.