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Wow! What am I missing here? This is a regular (and somewhat scruffy) G7201R. Post-war and non-grooved receiver (value about $300-$400 max.).
WACA Life Member #6284 - Specializing in Pre-64 Winchester .22 Rimfire
As the seller said: “you got to have it.” Fantastic, but maybe those bidders saw what the 67 WRF brought. An old dealer’s trick in the high-dollar art market was to put up a work by some artist that wasn’t selling well, then have two conspirators bid up the price to a record level, which always had the effect of stimulating public interest & sales. The dealer or whomever owned it was only out the cost of the auctioneer’s commission, unless he, too, was in on the scam, as they often were.
While these type of auction anomalies have always occurred and could be accounted (or discounted) for when estimating gun values, they are getting more prevalent for the lowly .22s and it is getting harder to establish a “normal” range of values for the more rare types and now even the more common models such as this simple Model 72.
Bert has got his work cut out for him with the next update of the Red Book. He will probably have to update his estimate algorithm to factor in “greedy” and “stupid” as well as your aforementioned “just gotta have it”.
The whole reason I started collecting bolt action Winchester .22s 40+ years ago is because they were cheap and nobody really cared about them. That is obviously not the case anymore. Not sure I could afford to start a .22 rimfire collection from scratch in today’s economy.
Best Regards,
WACA Life Member #6284 - Specializing in Pre-64 Winchester .22 Rimfire
November 7, 2015
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Nice enough gun but price paid likely merely indicates that two people wanted it pretty badly for whatever reason. In my humble opinion Winchester rimfires are generally undervalued but this one sold for three times what it should sell for today. If we could figure out these auctions we could probably quit our day jobs.
Mike
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