A very good friend passed thanksgiving week in 2018. I was in Vegas visiting family at the time. His wife called me, she knew it was coming.

He was a Vietnam vet (medic) and hunter, bullseye shooter, Winchester collector. He worked for a gunsmith (Geo Beitzinger) for a few years. Printer by trade.

I met him when he was a range officer at our pistol club/range in NYC.

When I joined the club I went there on each day of the week for a few weeks. Ronny was range office on Wed. and Fri. I decided that was my nights. He could tell Vietnam stories and hunting stories all night long.

German with an Italian wife. She is a hoot also, We get together at least once a month.

We had a few guys in the club pass on. That is how I wound up with all this stuff to sell. I can't see it being tossed or sold out to a dealer for pennies on the dollar.

His buddies in his unit in Vietnam called him Tiny (6'5 by 6'5 when I met him).

One story has him stuck jumping out of a helicopter, rifle/sling stuck on the back of the co-pilots door. Helo is jumping off and they are yelling at him to get out.

Co-pilot gets the sling loss and Tiny falls upside down out the door into a tall bush.

Great memory of a lost friend.

Rich, that is a great thing you are doing. it takes a lot of time and work to go through someone's gun stuff.
I have a best friend with even more stuff then I have. We tell each other they have to hang on long enough for the other to die first.
Nobody else is going to want to deal with selling all the things.

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Nobody else is going to want to deal with selling all the things.

It's hard enough to go through and sell family things, let alone selling stuff belonging to friends!

It is indeed. Add to that something that I have done several times + swore never to do again, but have anyway. Helping the widow sell his guns. I have always managed to get a fair market price for the ladies, but invariably there is some AH out there who was not interested in helping out but after the fact, spouting off how they could/should have got much more. + now, suddenly I'm the villain. No good deed goes unpunished.

Yep. I was asked to sell off my best friends collection by his widow last year at this time. It was tough. I put them in the shop on consignment (not my shop) and sold them all quickly and for decent money. I did manage to save her big money as a family member swooped in and tried to buy a Rock-O-La M1 carbine (unmolested) for $100!

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Originally posted by Bobster:
Yep. I was asked to sell off my best friends collection by his widow last year at this time. It was tough. I put them in the shop on consignment (not my shop) and sold them all quickly and for decent money. I did manage to save her big money as a family member swooped in and tried to buy a Rock-O-La M1 carbine (unmolested) for $100!

I’m glad you saved that M1 carbine from the slug.

Yes indeed! When I was just a young boy, staying with my grandparents, there was a death in the family + what I recalled the most was some of those "grown-ups" arguing about a certain china hutch of the deceased + who DESERVED it. At that point, as a little kid, I swore I would never be that way. I never have. That made a HUGE impression on me.