I have bought a ton of used guns in my life.

I can say with 100% certainty that only a handful of them had a clean bore when I bought it.

Some were far worse than others, but only a few had been properly, much less thoroughly, cleaned.

As someone who keeps his guns pretty darned clean, I have never understood that.

I like buying very dirty guns the price is always cheaper.

I have bought new rifles with dirty bores. The bores were oiled but not cleaned after test firing I presume.
I am in the habit of externally cleaning my rifles after use and before storage. I hate rust getting started and the climate in which I live promotes rust. So sometimes I have to pull a rifle apart to apply protection to those areas not usually cleaned. Stainless Steel rifles makes a difference and I have never found as much rust on any as compared to blued CM steel rifles. But, I have also learned over time that Stainless Steel varies and some will start to rust slowly if unprotected while others seem to never rust at all.

Years back I bought a Winchester model 70 .338 that was about 50 years old at the time. It came from a guy who hunted pretty extensively throughout North America with it. The dings in the stock and worn blueing showed it.

As usual I cleaned it inside and out when I got it but this was already very clean. So yes sometimes used guns are clean. But at least as many are anything but which always makes me a little suspicious when I look them over before buying.

Because many guys over clean their bores; taking them back down to bare steel is a mistake; they should not be cleaned so much as to expose the bare steel pores. Like an iron frying pan, you do not clean it back to raw metal. So, a correctly maintained barrel will only be totally clean, once.

Some bores copper foul more or faster than others. If and when fouling starts to affect accuracy I set about cleaning out the copper. A thorough de-fouling usually means getting the bore back to a bare metal state. Maybe not always the best thing to do (?) but accuracy returns.

If you want a new gun that hasn't been fired, find a NOS Remington from the pre-bankruptcy days. Only 1:200 were test fired. The consumer served as QC.

My theory has always been that one will never know how accurate a rifle can be unless he starts shooting with a clean bore.

I think the most common reason is that folks are getting rid of guns for a reason. I suspect that a last hunt with a miss or one last bad range session are reasons for things to be let go. They oil it up as they know that a rusty gun will get them nothing, and move the problem on. Also, a bit of crud in the bore obscures some light pitting/rust.

If you accept that the majority of folks are lazy and are willing to lie over a few bucks, it makes a lot of sense that the guns are sold dirty.

I've brought more than a few military surplus guns that look like they were shot and then the armorers put cosmoline on them and they were put into storage and then sold. Those can be a real challenge to get clean, but once they are they often do shoot really quite well.

I also think some folks have different ideas of what clean is.

So the answer is there are a bunch of reasons folks sell dirty guns.

I’m afraid you are right.

I would not sell a dirty gun.

Nor would I sell a defective gun without full and detailed disclosure of all known defects.

I have actually never ended up with a true lemon, but some I’ve bought have sure as hell needed some work.

And most of them have been more or less dirty.

quote:

Originally posted by Bobster:
If you want a new gun that hasn't been fired, find a NOS Remington from the pre-bankruptcy days. Only 1:200 were test fired. The consumer served as QC.

When I sold guns we had a Weatherby Vanguard returned to the store - it was never properly chambered, yet the test target was excellent..