Do you remember the Snake Charmer? It was a little single shot .410 shotgun with a black plastic partial stock so that it just barely met the legal minimum length of 26" and the stock had a sliding cover that held four .410 shells at the ready. They used to sell for about $79 and I always thought they were cool, but never got around to getting one. NEF makes one these days, but the stock is different and it just doesn't have the same cool factor for me.
Anyway, yesterday while I was on lunch break from my FEMA class in Norfolk, I stopped in at a nearby gun shop. It was one of those hole in the wall shops that had been there for years, and it looked like the bad neighborhood had grown up around the shop, but the owner was too stubborn to leave. As I looked around the shop, I saw some great used guns, and a small selection of new ones. Throughout the middle of the store was a crazy pile of gun cases, accessories, and other odds and ends. Then I saw it... not the new NEF version, but an original Snake Charmer. He got it down for me and I checked it out. It was in really nice shape, but it didn't have a price tag on it. He pulled up his computer, and at first I assumed he was checking his records, but I later figured he was looking on Auction Arms or a similar site. He then announced the price as $229?!?!?! I told him I'd think about it overnight. I can't imagine he has more than $50 in it and it had been in the shop so long that he had to look it up. I'd have been real tempted to snatch it up for $100 or $125 max, but $229... not a chance. It would be great to have in a scabbard on the side of the lawn tractor.
Top Shot Speaks Out
The winner of last season's Top Shot, Dustin Ellermann, recently put out a great essay on the Texas Fish & Game website on the politics of guns, offering sarcastic advice to politicians and media types who want to ban our guns. Unfortunately, some seem to be taking his advice. Give it a read here.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please feel free to comment on my posts. I do ask that you keep the language clean. I reserve the right to moderate comments and will delete any that violate the principles of respectful discourse or that are spam. I will not delete your comment for simply disagreeing with me.