[Calgacus]

Skennerton isn't in the business of stopping people from taking wooden nickels, so I think the real reason he won't commit himself without personal examination is the large number of far better done No.4T fakes (etc. etc.) which come on the market.

Saxby and Farmer are almost certain to be the British Saxby and Palmer. Here we have a minor difficulty, for there is no telling how long some of these minor British firms have been in business, or what they made when gun laws allowed for a bigger market. But in modern times they made airguns. Their commonest were German zinc alloy framed but real revolvers, I think Weihrauch, adapted to fire only their own very ingenious and efficient compressed-air cartridges. But they also did similarly fuelled conversions of real rifles, mostly Lee-Enfields. They were banned some years ago, and in contrast to cartridge handguns, they became unownable under any circumstances, and without compensation. To be fair, controlling airguns had nothing to do with it. The revolvers WERE being converted to cartridge use (probably very inefficient and dangerous use) by mostly West Indian drug gangs.

It's even possible that this rifle was once a Saxby and Palmer airgun conversion, and/or had "Saxby and Palmer" stamped on it. I suppose some people would count nine letters right out of eleven as more than 90% right. Or maybe he just needed to think of a name.

 

[Calgacus]

I laughed so hard at those Enfields and your use of the phrase "We have this little ripper!" That phrase reminds me of my grandma, who uses the word "ripper" fairly often. Back to the subject at hand though, those are insanely obvious fakes, the writing alone is just too much. I have to hand it to you, those were some hillarious finds.

Winston Churchill is sometimes accused of using expanding bullets in his C96 Mauser pistol in his cavalry charge of 1898, because he described it as "a ripper". He of course meant only that it was particularly good.

I see the perpetrator of this enterprise is conscientious enough to have a little flexible lamp, enabling him to check the bore for the three possible conditions they are ever in: excellent, very good or "would clean up to very good." I'm amazed more dealers don't do the most profitable piece of bore cleaning in the business.