Model 88: Best Way To Sell All 4 Calibers|Winchester Rifles|Forum|Winchester Collector

You need to post pictures through a host site.  But for now post the serial numbers. 

Jay, Sorry for the loss of your father.

Jay McCullough said
Thanks Chuck. Here is a pic of each serial number with the caliber also visible:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/V2CupSUyJwT1cETEA
From the Murray book on the Model 88, it looks like the .358 is pre-57 and the .284 is pre-64 which makes it pretty rare. I hadn’t noticed that there was only one year of .284 production prior to 64.
  

Jay – these guns all have the “basket weave” checkering which was not used until 1964. My experience is that these are harder to sell than the pre-64 specimens and as with all Winchester lever models, condition plays a huge role in determining collectability and price – the .284 and .358 are more desirable. Here is a photo of a pre-64 with the early style checkering for comparison.

Jay,  you had asked whether you should offer the rifles as a set or severally.  I don’t have a ready answer but I can tell you how I would go about deciding how to sell. 

1. At least based on the images you posted, none of these rifles are pristine. It would be helpful in assigning a condition to each of them if you made more extensive photography available. Condition is very important when trying to sell post-63 Winchesters made before the mid to late Nineteen Seventies, when some measure of sanity returned to the Commercial Gun Department (co-extensively with the end of the Vietnam War and huge annual.sales of military ammunition.)

2. The 284 and 358 caliber rifles are likely the most valuable because few were made. But condition is a big factor in those cases, too. 

3. The best way to determine value of a post-63 Model 88 that I know of is to make a comprehensive survey of the CLOSED online auctions of the model– just the post-63 variants — sorting them to show highest number of bids (not bid amounts) first.  Look at the auction pictures and compare conditions to your own guns. Gunbroker is a prime source of this information. 

4. This survey will also show you, if anything will, premiums or discounts for particular calibers. 

5. The same survey – and a similar survey of then still open auctions — should give you some idea of the current demand for the post-63 Model 88. 

6. If the perceived demand for your 358 and 284 IN THEIR PRESENT CONDITIONS is very high, and the demand for the other two is at least average,  I would, speaking for myself, auction them all separately.

7. To do that, you have to do extensive photography –not just one or two images. You want to be selling to end users, not dealers, for top dollar. 20 or 30 clear, we’ll lit, in-focus images per gun. 

8. Post-63 Model 88 rifles in 308 and 243 are not attractive to collectors, although hunters seem to like them. The only way I would consider auctioning all four as a set would be if the perceived values of the 284 and 358 were stratospheric and those of the 308 and 243 were in the gutter. Maybe, the package could yield more than two big hitters and two dogs. But it would shut out a lot of bidders and I frankly don’t like the idea. 

9 Setting up a good auction is hard work that takes time. But it can pay big dividends. I think 14 day no-reserve auctions are best. Don’t do dollar start auctions unless you really know what you’ve got. Otherwise, set the minimum bid at the least you’ll take.  If that’s too high you’ll know it because nobody will bid but you won’t suffer a catastrophe.

10. You can consign to a local.dealer but you’ll give up 15% to 25% of the proceeds. The worse problem is dealers want to low ball the selling price to make a quick sale. Know what your gun is worth at retail, don’t let the dealer set the price.

11. In sum, [A] knowledge is power. Do the research before you put these guns up for sale.  (B) Good, extensive photography is mandatory before anybody can assess condition or take a buying interest.

I hope this helps a bit.

Lane,  I was of age (20) in 1964 and a subscriber to Gun Digest.  I can still recall the howling that went up when “the new look” line — including the burnt-in oakleaf checkering pattern stocks on the Winchester Models 88 and 100 — were introduced in early 1964. 

I need to go back and read your posts about the serial numbers and what sources you used to obtain dates of manufacture. I will take the serial numbers down and try to trace them myself from sources I know to be reliable. 7

However, if a Model 88 was manufactured with impressed oakleaf checkering patterns before late 1963, it would be a miracle of the first water because Winchester  installed the necessary equipment to create “checkering” patterns on stocks using pressure and heat no earlier than1962. 

In any event, it is the existence and appearance of the dis-favored stocking (and some other disliked manufacturing processes incorporated at the same time), that depresses the collector value of such rifles, not a serial number itself. 

I’ll try to get back to you today but it may have to be later. 

Bert,  I want to get straight in my mind the sequence of Winchester’s assembly and serialization processes.  We had previously discussed when serials were rollmarked on Model 71 receivers  — before or after bluing. 

Is it true that Winchester serialized only complete guns — that is,  a barreled action was seated in a stock, finished or unfinished, the barreled action was removed and sent to the polishing and bluing rooms, returning with a serial number to its mating stock? 

Another way of asking the question would be whether serials were ever applied to un-barreled receivers and binned for later assembly?

Bert,  Thanks.  I had it backward.

I’ve been puzzling over this 1958 serialized Model.88 receiver that wound up fitted with a post’63 stock.  Because the gun can’t talk and it was bought used at a show way after 1964,  the true facts are probably lost for good.

I’m no expert on the Model 88 or the 100 but I’ve owned and used one of each, an 88 made in 1955 and a 100 made in 1960, both chambered in 308. Sound and sleek rifles except for the mushy triggers.

I don’t think a parts-fitted 88 receiver would vary in components by caliber, with the exception of the magazine and maybe the 284 bolt face and extractor, so the unpopularity of the 284 style should have had no effect on when this bare receiver was picked from the bin to be assembled into a gun.  

I don’t know the sales figures for the 88 but I don’t think it was a big seller, ever but especially after 1964. It was never inexpensive and by 1955 I believe buyers wanted scoped bolt actions and flat-shooting calibers. I know in Texas they did, even for hunting in the brush. It must have frustrated the designers because before the War there was a lot of moaning in the Sporting press about the absence of a lever actiom 270. Bliss Titus was custom making Savage 99 rifles for a wildcat 27 on the 300 Savage case..

I have read and heard from several gunsmiths that getting a rifle to reliably feed and chamber the fat, rebated rim 284 was not for the faint of heart. 

While the luck of the bin draw could have delayed assembly for 5 years (say, 1958 to  late1963), in those Vietnam War years Winchester’s new masters didn’t much care, so maybe..

The odds of a stock replacement sound equally good to me, although it’s hard to tear up a Model 88 stock that bad without getting into the steel. 

I know this will make you wince — I’ll admit it did me — but maybe somebody liked the burned on leaves and French skip desecrations and ordered one out. Big D is not noted for its exquisite taste in many things and the several Texans in the All Bid’ness who ordered a  Winslow PlainsMaster would have had  to go for those charred oak leaves. 

If WRA hadn’t quit date stamping barrels we might could guess better.

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