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Lessons in Cold War economics and stag hunting with the KGB under the hammer and sickle of Soviet Communism.
Did I ever tell you about the time I paid a hundred thousand dollars for a deer? The money wasn’t mine of course, and it was in rubles, Russian money, but that’s what the tab came to in American money.
The whole thing happened several years ago, before the fall of Soviet communism, and the Russians wanted to do some trading with an American computer manufacturer. (I’m going to leave out some names, and change those of the Russians involved, because for all I know they could still get in trouble over what happened.)
What they wanted were not the type of high-powered computers used for strategic military purposes or stuff like that, and in any event we couldn’t sell to them anyway, except for ordinary PCs for innocent chores like library retrieval and medical records.
As it happened, there was at least one U.S. maker of such computers willing to do business with the Russians, but the catch was they didn’t want Russian money. The reason being that Russian bucks – rubles – were virtually worthless out of Russia, and for that matter not worth much inside Russia either. But more about that later.
So what the Russians had in mind was swapping some of their products for our computers, and among the items they wanted to trade were guns. Mainly sporting shotguns. The U.S. computer company was interested in trading for guns, but they didn’t know anything about Russian shotguns or the American gun market. And that’s how I came to be involved.
The deal they offered was irresistible: two Americans, my good pal John Amber, the legendary editor of Gun Digest, and myself, accompanied by a trade specialist from the computer company, would visit some of the Russian gunmakers and size up what they had to offer, then give our opinions as to what appeal Russian guns would have for American hunters. In return for our services, they would treat us to an exclusive hunt for Russian stag, plus some waterfowl hunting in one of their preserves.
On top of that, they promised a private tour of the fabled gun collection inside the Kremlin itself. I would have been happy to go just for a peek at the gun factories and Kremlin tour, so the hunting was gravy.
But first I had to be convinced that everyone was on the up and up about the computers to be swapped, that they were not to be used for strategic purposes, and that I would not be aiding and abetting our Cold War enemies.
As it turned out, even our State Department was in favor of the deal, so I agreed to go, and it came to pass that on a drizzly November evening, I found myself in the dark and dreary bar of a Moscow hotel in some rather mixed company.
Aside from Amber and myself, there was the American trade specialist, whom I’ll call Dave, and another American, Roger Barlow, whom I’d met before. Barlow, in addition to being a firearms expert in his own right, was a cinematographer who had been hired to make a promotional movie of our tour and hunting.
The other members of our suspicious-looking group were Hans, an Austrian who looked after the computer maker’s affairs in Europe, and Viktor, a Russian whose English-printed business card proclaimed him a “Consultant for Technical Product Trade Alliances,” or some such hopelessly unfathomable bureaucratic title.
Viktor and I hadn’t hit it off very well at first, beginning with my rather discourteous inquiry if it were possible to get a gin and tonic in Russia, followed by his scowling admonishment that they were not uncivilized bears. As we sat glaring at each other and contemplating an escalation of the Cold War, Hans relieved the growing tension by asking if we would like to go upstairs and see the money.
Carmichel (third from left) poses with foresters and the hunters in front of the Russian lodge. Viktor (far left) was assigned by the KGB to keep tabs on the author.
“The what?”
“The money,” he replied, chuckling at my befuddlement, then began explaining the peculiarities of doing business with the Soviet government.
As the ancient birdcage-shaped elevator creaked and bumped its way to the top floor, Hans let us in on the strange fact that the Soviets paid cash in their international trade deals.
The catch to paying rubles on the barrelhead, however, is that the money is almost worthless and besides that, it couldn’t be taken out of the country. Which is why their so-called cash business had to be propped up with trades for Russian goods, such as the guns Amber and I had come to have a look at.
As a result of such dealings, so much Russian money had been accumulated by his company that Hans had rented a hotel room to store it in. In fact, the entire top floor of the hotel!
“Why bother with a bank,” he further explained, “when rubles aren’t worth stealing.”
And having thus explained what we were about to see, Hans produced a key and swung open the door of a large room. And there, in great piles in the middle of the floor and terraced against the walls, were big bundles of rubles, all in large denominations.
Astonished by so much money lying around relatively unguarded, I was somehow reminded of the Donald Duck comic books I’d read as a kid, in which Donald’s Uncle Scrooge McDuck hoarded huge piles of money that he played with like a child in a sandbox.
“Part of my job,” Hans went on after my companions and I had recovered our collective breath, “is to look after this money and keep inventory. Fresh piles of rubles come in pretty often.”
“But what will become of it?” I had to ask.
“Who knows,” Hans answered with a shoulder shrug, as if he had no particular interest. Shrugs, as I was to learn in coming days, are part of the Russian language. Especially in official circles.
Over the next three days we looked at guns, were escorted from place to place like dignitaries, indeed saw the Kremlin gun collection, and ate some awful meals (I’ll tell that story another time).
We also did some skeet shooting with Eugene Petrov, the Olympic gold-medalist shooter (I let him beat me because it was the politically polite thing to do), saw the changing of the guard at Lenin’s tomb, and took in a wonderful performance at the famed Bolshoi Ballet.
After the ballet, we attended a fancy reception at one of the gilded and chandelier-hung government palaces. Most of the attendees were military types, each of whom was festooned with yards of gold braid and acres of service medals, so I figured they must be important guys.
They seemed to be bored with the affair and indifferent to their American guests, eagerly consuming vodka and caviar with the same single-minded diligence I’ve observed when dealing with American bureaucrats.
Meanwhile, Viktor and I were hitting it off better. He spoke American English with a New York accent that he picked up when he was a member of the Soviet delegation to the U.N. He was a man to be liked, I discovered during our jaunts, but also a man to be feared.
I found this out late one afternoon, after he and I had been on a walking tour of Moscow and decided we were too far from the hotel to walk back and had better take a taxi.
There were plenty of empty cabs going by, but none seemed interested in stopping, apparently because their daily quotas had been filled and they were just joy riding.
After several minutes of fruitless cab hailing, Viktor calmly stepped into the lines of traffic and held up his hand so the oncoming cabs could see what he held in his palm. From my angle I couldn’t see what he was holding, but it was powerful stuff because a half-dozen or so taxis screeched to a halt, their drivers tumbling out and jerking the rear doors open for our entry, all grinning and bowing like boys caught misbehaving.
We selected the cleaner looking and best repaired of the taxis. Once inside, I took a long look at Viktor and suddenly KGB flashed in my mind like a fluttering neon sign – the dreaded Soviet Secret Police.
So that’s it, I realized, Viktor’s job is to keep an eye on us and make sure we don’t get into trouble.
He must have sensed my questions in the making because before I could speak, he simply shrugged and settled back for our silent ride through the darkening streets of Moscow. When we arrived at the hotel a light snow had begun to fall, and I wondered if I was seeing the beginning of the Russian winter. It had defeated Napoleon’s might and a vast German army. Would a couple of American gunwriters fair any better?
Carmichel grips a cluster of bloody oak leaves, which in accordance to Russian tradition, he then placed inside his cap.
According to our schedule, we were to fly several hundred miles south of Moscow to the city of Krasnadar, and from there, drive to a camp where we would hunt the fabled Russian stag.
None of us, Viktor included, had any idea what a Russian hunting camp would be like or what services it would offer. So, to be on the safe side, we figured it would be wise to stock up on some caviar, smoked salmon, and other such nutrients vital to survival in a hunting camp. And a few bottles of vodka wouldn’t be a bad idea either.
To pay for these necessities, we raided Han’s hoard of rubles at the hotel and filled a scuffed and ancient crocodile suitcase we found in one of the rooms.
But as it turned out, the foodstuffs we needed were not available at the bare-shelved peoples’ markets. In order to buy caviar and other such desirable Russian goods, we had to go to relatively swanky, state-run shops that catered only to foreign currency, preferably U.S. dollars. When we flipped open our ruble-stuffed suitcase and offered to pay in local greenbacks, the husky saleswoman scowled and slammed the lid closed.
“Nyet.”
It’s about $3.50 U.S. for one ruble. The illegal street exchange rate, however, was about ten rubles for a single dollar. The ridiculous exchange rate, as it turned out, was to bring our hunt to an almost unhappy conclusion.
The shopping tour was a lesson in Soviet economics, but not particularly a surprise because after the previous days in the capital city, I was getting a clearer idea of what Winston Churchill had meant when he said, “Russia is a riddle inside a puzzle wrapped in an enigma.”
When we got back to our hotel, laden with our survival foods and finished packing for departure for the airport, another Russian mystery presented itself: Viktor’s almost psychotic fear of flying.
Only he didn’t tell us of his fearful distrust of flying on Aeroflot, the Soviet State airline, but rather, lied about the airport at Krasnadar, our destination, being closed for repair and that we would have to go by train. His explanation about the closed airport seemed a bit thin, but no one questioned his motives except to ask if train reservations had been made.
Viktor shrugged, “We’ll take care of that when we get to the station,” and I had visions of us crammed into a drafty boxcar filled with smelly peasants and chugging across a frozen landscape like in a scene from Doctor Zhivago.
The reality of the train we were to take was pleasantly different. It was huge, with tracks of a wider gauge than ours, and pulled by a gigantic, gleaming engine surmounted by the symbolic hammer and sickle of Soviet Communism.
But very uncommunistic, for a supposedly classless society, was that the train offered four classes of travel. Upon learning this, we naturally hoped that we could get First Class seats, but without prior reservations it seemed doubtful.
”I’ll see what I can do,” Viktor shrugged and casually approached a pudgy, cheery-looking young woman, dressed in what looked like a stewardess uniform, standing by the steps of the yacht-like First Class car.
He spoke quietly to her for a moment and was answered by a vehement shaking of her head and a flurry of negative hand gestures. Clearly, there was no First Class space available, and I was resigning myself to travel among the deodorant-challenged masses when Viktor gently took the stewardess by the arm and walked her a short way down the platform with their backs to us and out of hearing.
When they returned, she climbed into the First Class coach and Viktor walked over to our apprehensive group.
“It will be a few minutes…she is reassigning the First-Class compartments, and then we will get on board.”
Viktor’s mysterious badge had again worked its magic.
The trip to Krasnadar lasted 28 hours, and as the giant train roared through miles of primeval forests and across seemingly endless plains, I saw firsthand the abject failure of communism: wheat fields big enough to feed a nation were littered with abandoned farm machinery, while in the villages, horses tugged carts along muddy streets.
Wandering through the crowded lower class coaches I saw only sullen faces until I reached Fourth Class, where some turbaned Kuzaks were cooking over tiny alcohol stoves. A woman, probably younger than she looked, with her head tightly swathed in a patterned shawl, smiled at me with government-issue stainless steel teeth and invited me to eat with them by pointing at a steaming pot and patting her stomach. It smelled delicious.
The only other sounds of gaiety I heard as the hours passed were uproarious laughter and shrill giggles from a compartment near mine that was inhabited by two Soviet generals and a couple of women who looked too young to be their wives.
On the few occasions any of them emerged from the compartment, they wore faces of solemn dignity, but when the door closed, the giggling would resume. In our own compartments the supply of caviar and salmon diminished at a steady rate and was completely gone by the time our train arrived in Krasnadar.
Which was just as well because our hunting “camp” was a villa once used by the Czars of Imperial Russia and their hunting buddies. It was fully staffed by cooks and maids and gamekeepers who wore the traditional European gamekeeper’s insignia of oak clusters but entwined in their gold-embroidered leaves was the hammer and sickle.
After many introductions to officials whose names I couldn’t possibly understand or remember, we were ushered into a small meeting room with a podium over which hung a portrait of Lenin sitting by a campfire, shotgun over his knee, and apparently haranguing a cluster of fellow hunters.
A white-uniformed maid, as sour looking as she was fat, served scalding tea marble-hard biscuits after which the chief forester welcomed us briefly in passable English, then went about the serious business of explaining the rules of Russian hunting.
His main concern, it seemed, was that we understood their trophy scoring system and, using charts and diagrams, detailed the measurement methods and how a monetary value was attached to various trophy points.
At the time I was under the impression that I was a non-paying guest and paid little attention to the price tags attached to various parts of a stag’s antlers, but I couldn’t help but note the distinctly capitalistic way they were intent on profiting from their deer herd.
That evening, over a meal better than anything we’d had in Moscow, the vodka left over from our train ride disappeared. As it did, the stony-faced local officials became increasingly convivial and the foresters who would be our guides on the morrow raised endless toasts to our coming success.
The Russian stag we were hunting is more commonly known throughout Europe as red deer and is a cousin to North American elk, though somewhat smaller and with a rather different antler configuration, typically branching into a cluster of points at the upper ends. On the better trophies these upper points may palmate into cuplike formations called chalices. The Soviet pricing schedule put a high value on fine chalices.
On the morning of our hunt we were issued our rifles, which were Baikal Medveds. (Baikal is the trade name applied to most Russian sporting arms, more or less the equivalent of Remington or Winchester.) The gas-operated Medved autoloader, even with its checkered sporter-style stocks, has distinctly military parentage with an over-the-barrel action rod and military-style sights similar to the Simonov and AK systems. The caliber was 9mm and looked something like a .35 Remington but a bit shorter.
When I asked for ballistic details, I was answered with a shrug and told it was called “deer.” Another sporting caliber, I learned, is called “bear.” Which probably means that Russian big game hunters don’t have much to debate or choose from in the way of calibers. Only one of the rifles had a scope – a stubby low-power model that looked to be of WW II sniper vintage, which John Amber opted to use.
The vast woodland around us was known as the Red Forest, which was no surprise as they attached the color of revolution communism to about everything (Red Square in Moscow, for example). The deer are hunted from stands with beaters driving the game toward the guns.
The stands turned out to be impromptu hiding places selected by our individual guides. My chain-smoking guide spoke no more English than I spoke Russian and carried a battered bolt-action rifle of ancient origin. Despite the language barrier – or because of it – we got along pretty well with the sign language that hunters communicate with the world over.
A Russian guide with the author’s big jackal.
On the first drive we spotted a jackal zigzagging in our direction. I wasn’t sure if it was on the shooting menu and raised my eyebrows in the universal questioning expression. He responded by nodding in the affirmative, touching my rifle and making a shooting gesture. So when the jackal came within about 25 yards, I killed it with an easy shot. This pleased the guide immensely, who pantomimed that he would take the skin and make it into a fur cap.
When I fired at the jackal, the front sight fell off my rifle and was retrieved by the guide after a brief search in the leaves. He slipped the sight back onto the muzzle – still as loose as before –and smiled with satisfaction at the repair.
Now it was my turn to shrug, and I made a mental note to recommend that the Medved not be imported for American hunters.
There were two drives that morning and on the second drive we heard a couple of nearby shots followed minutes later by a running Viktor, explaining that he had wounded a stag and asking if it had come our way. We had seen nothing.
On the second day of our hunt, I was stationed at the edge of a vast, recently plowed field. Two deer had been bagged the previous afternoon, plus the wounded one Viktor was still tracking, but I had seen nothing.
More and more I was blaming my poor luck on my guide’s incessant cigarette smoking, which was probably spooking any deer headed our way. Just as I was contemplating a complaint to the head forester, the guide made a hissing sound and nudged me toward the open field.
There, coming in from an angle that would bring them within 75 yards, was a gang of five or six stags running in a loose bunch. All had good antlers, and as far as I could tell, each was good as the others so I simply swung the loose sights of my Medved ahead of the lead stag and pulled the two-stage trigger.
The shot had no effect that I could see except to turn the deer toward the safety of the forest. Just before they disappeared, I fired again, with no apparent effect. I was disgusted with my bungling shot and with myself even more for being so dumb as to hunt with a rifle without having had a chance to check its zero.
But just as I was beginning to utter my disgust, the guide put his cupped hand behind his ear, pantomiming hearing a distant sound, then pointing in the direction where the stags had disappeared. Then he broke into a big smoky grin and made a downward motion with his hands. I had hit the stag and it was down!
The next morning the Russians turned out in their best medal-bedecked suits and uniforms and presented us with rather elegant-looking certificates, which on closer inspection turned out to be scorecards tallying the points of our trophies. Handshakes and solemn congratulations were offered, and at the conclusion of the ceremony, a calculator was produced and it was obvious that rubles were being converted to U.S. dollars.
After considerable whispering among themselves and a bit of smug giggling, they presented us with our individual bills. Mine came to something a little over a hundred grand, and the main bureaucrat who handed us our bills stood in front of me in smiling anticipation, as if he thought I had that much cash on me and was going to hand it over.
The night before, Dave had warned us that the Russians would probably try to milk us for a bunch of dollars and outlined what our response was to be. Since I was the first of our group to be presented with the outrageous bill, I was the first to speak. I savored the moment.
Red Forest officials tally the huge cost of the author’s stag hunt, hoping to be paid in American dollars.
“You wish to pay in American, no?”
“Nyet,” I replied, returning the bureaucrat’s smile and ignoring his proffered bill for American money. “We’ll pay in rubles…your money.”
“Viktor, open that old suitcase so we can pay these guys off and get out of here.”
The 1931 Intourist Poster
- The Artwork: Designed by Georgi Konstantinovich Savitsky, the iconic lithograph depicts a winter wilderness scene with a skier and hunting dogs taking aim at a brown bear.
- The Purpose: Commissioned by Intourist, the state travel agency, the poster was targeted at foreign travelers—particularly in the Anglophone world—to sell the Soviet Union as a rugged destination for exotic outdoor adventure, spectacle, and organized sporting travel.
- Starting in the 1970s, the Soviet government formally opened up specialized hunting tourism for wealthy international visitors in regions like the Caucasus, using big game expeditions as a lucrative source of foreign hard currency.
The old Marine Corps saying summed it up succinctly;
Join the United States Marine Corps.
Travel to exotic, foreign lands.
Meet unusual, interesting people.
And kill them.
SAC version:
Nuke ’em ’till they glow
Shoot ’em in the dark,
Then line up their asses for runway lights!
Navy version
Nuke em till they glow and then shoot em in the dark
or my all time favorite!
The US Army – We do bad things to bad people! 
We discuss how to avoid getting ripped off in today’s Colt Single Action Army collector market.
As of this writing, Colt Single Action Army revolvers have never been more valuable. Browsing Cabela’s online Gun Library, GunBroker, ArmsList and more, prices range from the tolerable to ridiculous—some in the ballpark of $25,000.
As you can imagine, this market is littered with fraud, and many sellers are complicit, knowingly or not. In many cases, you can accurately assess your skill as a Colt collector by the ones you don’t buy.
I’ve collected, bought and sold military surplus rifles for most of my life. This was fostered by their comparatively low prices during my youth; Mosin rifles could be had for as low as $65, and a case of 440 rounds, in a sealed tin, came in at a whopping $40.
I fondly recall spending virtually all my money in late high school trying to collect various stamps and markings: Each gun show was like an archaeological dig and I was a fossil hunter.
Those days are now long gone, and the surplus market has since dried up in many ways. The average Mosin is now about as expensive as the next gun, with most military surplus rifles going for $500 to $1,000, depending on country of origin and condition. What has since happened to the surplus market is nothing short of criminal.
The same thing has occurred in the Colt market as well, but with substantially greater financial risk.
What Is ‘Value?’
The main issue is what constitutes value. In the surplus market, things tend to level out given the supply of guns that can be readily forged or rebuilt for profit.
It’s substantially harder to rip off someone with a Swiss K31 than it is with a 1903 Springfield, simply because there aren’t hundreds of thousands of spare parts floating around to make “new” surplus guns.
I regularly encounter “restored” M1903 and M1 Garand rifles that are anything but; they sport new barrels, stocks and, for the most part, are just an original action. For a parts gun 1903, $1,200 is fully double what you should be paying, considering an original example goes for that much. A genuine receiver doesn’t make a genuine gun.
Unfortunately, the same is happening in the Colt market, where many newly made replicas are being produced, and a large number of these guns can share parts with the originals.
So, why would someone do this? The average Gen 2 Colt is going for $3,000 to $5,000 these days. Several of my collector and historian friends speculate that a full 50 percent or more of the Colt Single Action Army market consists of guns containing non-Colt parts.
Faking Colts is an issue not just because of the insane values these guns hold, but because fakes are increasingly hard to spot—especially if they use original Colt parts in their deception. I’ve seen “genuine” Colts with modern CIP markings on their parts, likely take-offs from another import.
Likewise, I’ve seen stamps faked—only original Colts have the rampant pony stamped on them. The placement of these stamps can be convincing, and if you have doubts, ask a collector or local expert to come take a look at the shop before you buy.
As you can see in the photos, even Colt stamping from two brand-new guns looks very different, thus compounding the problem by allowing more “fudge” on forgeries.
I once almost spent $2,500 on a beautiful early Colt, only to find that the only actual Colt part was the frame itself. The rest of the parts were reproductions or “upgrades.”
While the gun was beautiful and chambered in .44 Special, I discovered that it started life as a .38-40 and was made in about 1895. This was concerning because Colt didn’t start endorsing the use of smokeless powder in their guns until a half-decade later.
I wouldn’t have found this out unless I had researched the serial number first. Even then, the seller wouldn’t back down, saying it was worth the price—but, in reality, he was selling a frame dressed up in take-offs or aftermarket parts.
That gun ended up selling for $3,000 a few weeks later. I found out from the store manager, himself insisting that I had lost out on a deal. I was floored because I knew that gun only sold because of the Colt markings. This is what I mean about sellers being complicit in this scam. I’d have paid $500 for the frame, not $3,000, and I’d have had it sent out to be faithfully restored in the original caliber using original parts.
This begs the question: What number of original parts must be in the gun to make it original in a sale context? I believe that the only truly valuable Colt is one that you buy yourself from the factory and have sent directly to you.
My two single actions in this article were sent to me directly by Colt, and I know that they’re truly original. Beyond that, I’d only own restorations from known and trusted sources, such as Turnbull Restorations.
The value of any gun is subjective, and in the above anecdote with the frame, I’d have paid for the single valuable part and then ditched the rest. Would the gun fire? Sure.
Would it be a fine companion for the trail and the range? Undoubtedly. However, by my considerations, it was not a Colt in the truest sense. I’d have happily paid for the frame at a realistic price, but consider this: The buyer essentially dished out $2,500 in parts of unknown origin, thinking he had a real deal. His value on that gun was what he paid; my value was different.
Are the documented $25,000 to $35,000 Colts at auction worth that much? Well, they’re selling for that much … and that is all I can say about that.
Restoration Or Ruination
Because the bulk of the Colt SAA line was produced around the turn of the 20th century, there are many guns out there that are completely original but in poor condition. I’ve found that, over time, many of these guns are still great shooters and have lots of life left; however, their cosmetics are lackluster.
One of the most accurate Colts I ever shot and owned was a 7½-inch Gen 3 from about 1980 in .45 Colt. It looked like it was made in 1880. I could tell it wasn’t a gun that enjoyed a nice comfy life in the safe; it had lost most of its finish and had a notable drag line on the cylinder. Nevertheless, it shot point-of-aim with factory Black Hills cowboy loads and did so with astonishing accuracy.
At the same time, I ended up owning a truly beautiful .44 Special that had been fully restored by Turnbull. The gun was a gem and had an accompanying .44-40 cylinder with it.
I contacted Colt on this gun, as well as Turnbull, and it was verified to have been made at the former and restored by the latter. I wanted my 7½-inch model to get restored after seeing how nice the finish was on the .44 Special, but I never went through with it and eventually sold both guns for a good sum to some area collectors.
I ended up selling the 7½-inch gun for almost double what I sold the .44 Special for, even though the .44 was a much prettier gun and was, by all accounts, original aside from the finish.
What happened was that even though the .45 was beat up, it was fully original and still had a great deal of the bluing on the cylinder and low barrel areas. Honest wear is a badge of honor, and neither shooting this gun nor putting it in leather managed to decrease the value.
So why would such a sad-looking gun out-price a beautiful one? Colt collectors want absolute authenticity and, while Turnbull does what’s arguably the best case-hardening in the world for these handguns, it’s not truly the same as an original Colt’s … except when it is. Turnbull has, in fact, worked with Colt directly on their case hardening, much like how Uberti and other Italian companies worked with Colt to make their C series “Re-issued” cap-and-ball revolvers in the 1970s.
So, are they really Uberti guns if they’re finished at Colt, or are they true Colts?
If you’re confused now, I don’t blame you. It doesn’t seem right that sending your gun to a place that has literally contracted with Colt to provide this exact type of finish is somehow akin to intentionally ruining your gun’s value.
However, if you ask any discerning collector if they’d rather have a refinished gun or a worn one in original condition, nearly all will take the latter. I think that this sentiment comes from a place of respectful nostalgia and an earned wariness of fraudsters looking to blend in their work under a pretty facade.
Risk Management
Replacing parts with period-correct originals can be done. There’s a fine line between making honest repairs and doing a complete rebuild, and I believe that line lies solely in the intention of the individual. If you’re a Colt owner and decide to replace a worn slot screw with a new one, I don’t think that you’re deceiving anyone.
What you need to spot is the sometimes-hidden angles that scalpers use … and turn it against them. A very simple method I’ve used is to call some refinishing houses and see if a gun came through them. It might take a while, but most of these places run their business with an FFL and will keep a log of the serial number as a matter of legal requirement.
This is a huge advantage, as some of these guns are selling for $5,000 or more, in 95 to 100 percent condition. You want to make sure you’re not investing in something that was screwed together and sent out for a fancy paint job.
Another method of utilizing the serial number is to contact Colt’s Archive Services to receive a letter from the company proving the authenticity of your gun. It’ll show the type of gun, finish, barrel length and original chambering. This is a massive benefit to you as a buyer because it’ll immediately validate your purchase, or it’ll allow you to reassess your expense.
Committed Colt collectors will use the Archive Services to bolster their value; a lettered Colt usually will pick up about 10 percent in value depending on the model and era. Not only are you bolstering value, but you’re also immediately able to see if your gun was rebuilt or altered in barrel or caliber.
As a general rule, a Colt that’s confirmed rebuilt is almost never worth more than $1,500. My collecting sources tell me that the general base price for a mix-and-match gun made from Colt parts should not exceed $1,500, as this is the overall cost of the parts if they were to be separated and sold individually.
Also, $1,500 is near the MSRP of a brand-new Colt SAA, and, considering that fact, represent a fair price. And think of it this way: These mix-and-match guns fall into a nice category, because you can look for these mixed original guns knowing that you can get a deal on a good shooter without paying the authenticated price tag.