Maverick said
For me the short answer is, “Like Father, Like Son”!

My father and I have a shared interest. I suppose in part I have the Winchester bug because I grew up with them. I spent many a gun show being carried on my father’s shoulders on the hunt. In doing so I learned the art of making a deal and much more.

Plus it for the most part is good clean fun!

Sincerely,

Maverick   

Maverick – that early training from your father sure gave you a jump start on many of us.  I didn’t attend my first gun show until I was a young adult.  Even though I was interested in guns long before that, I didn’t even know about shows!  My Dad was mildly interested in guns but that mainly had to do with what they were used for – hunting.  The bug bit me hard as a child and I recall I quickly burned my Dad out on the topic.  To be fair, I talked about guns incessantly and he just got his fill of the topic.  I will say guns were more popular among young people back then.  When I was in school, I did not participate in any school sports, nor did the guys I associated with.  Among our group, cars, guns and the fairer sex were the main topics.  Every time I went to a sporting goods store I always grabbed the free gun catalogs and would read them in class.  Sometimes, a teacher (never a female teacher) would catch me, take the catalog, read it himself and then give it back to me.  Think what they would do to a student now caught with such a catalog!

Another fun memory – my 7th grade English teacher was just starting his mail order gun business when I was in his class.  He specialized in antique and vintage firearms.  He put out a mailing catalog of his inventory for the next 50 years and I was a subscriber throughout that period.  I bought my first M1878 Burgess .45-70 “long range” lever action rifle from him in my early 20’s.  Unfortunately, I no longer have that rifle but I still have others I got from him.  Part of my attachment to those rifles is that they came from him.

I had My first .22 s.s. when I was 11 and would go to the local dump to shoot rats and the odd rabbit in the winter for the pot. Like most others My age ,70’s, I grew up with Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger , Gene Autry , etc. I loved them guys and them guns, the bad guys couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn door and the good guys couldn’t miss. I was well in My 20’s when I started “collecting” and I gotta tell Ya’ I met some pretty amazing people in the collecting fraternity that greatly influenced My life and the standards and principals I try to live by. Folks like Col. William (Bill) Brophy, Richard (Dick) Patterson, Harold Sleeth and the like, Down to earth “good” Folks who would take the time and effort to guide a newcomer in the proper direction. In My later years of gun collecting there are still lots of folks out there doing the same thing ,who I have a deep admiration and respect for, Like our own Bert Hartman, Vinny Martin , Michael, the The Texas Gun Nut, Clarence, Who I would like to meet up with sometime, and many more. I don’t know where one would go to duplicate The artistry,  craftsmanship and foresight of the people who manufactured these arms, in this day and age. Collecting the old Winchesters has served Me well over the years both broadening My horizons and also fiancially. I guess I just couldn’t point out one specific reason why I collect, but I can think of many good ones.

Folks,  Like has been posted by others, I am in my early 70s and grew up watching the westerns on the big screen or our black and white TV.  I played “cowboys and indians”, etc, but the last of my cap guns disappeared from home after I was in service.  I wasn’t aware just how much influence this all had on me until in 1973 when I saw a model 1873 rifle in Jensen’s Gun shop in Tucson, AZ.  I got it for the asking price of $200, which was pretty steep for a new Lieutenant.  It was serial number 83848, in .44 WCF.  And yes, I shot it!  NO idea why but years later I traded it off in the Tucson area.  Wish I had kept it, and I keep searching auctions for it.  My primary love is still the 1873 model, but I have a big heart and others found some room there!  Tim

I spent a lot of time in my grandfather’s shop as a child where the second lesson after safety was that the Model 12 was the greatest shotgun of all time.  He gave me my first Model 12 (a Hydracoil gun with a replacement 4x wood stock made by him.  Grandpa could never understand how anyone could do something so horrible to a Model 12 as Hydracoil) for 8th grade graduation.  I have been collecting ever since and have shared Winchester collecting with my father and two uncles).  We all collected Model 12’s and 42’s.  I have expanded into Model 21s which they approved and Model 1895 rifles which they all thought ugly.  Hard to look in a cabinet without a gun bring back fond memories of all of them.