Today's gun show treasures

[Pressman]

Every so often something turns up at a show that just makes no sense and screams buy me.
Today's haul is 30 pounds of bullets. They were in a very wet invironment, so much so most of the boxes are totally mush. What I have seen is 30 caliber and 8mm . There may be others buried in this mess.
The vintage Remington box is salvageable. It will go into the collection. Also found was 200 small pistol primers. They were once damp. Everything is well died out now, all that needs doing is sorting and trying to identify what is what.282946

[Dusty Bannister]

Gun shows and garage sales are there just to allow folks to ferret out a bag of stuff that begs us to go through and try to figure out the Whanelizthis. 30 pounds of bullets to sort by caliber and weight? That sounds like a winter project to me. The fun is in the quest.

[rancher1913]

i picked up a bunch that looked just like those at a yard sale really cheep, mine were mostly 35 cal.

[shooterg]

"Damp" ? Flooded maybe ! Have fun sorting and tumbling . I'da bought 'em too !!

[richhodg66]

I love gun shows. The best ones are the ones with very few dealers, I like digging through junk boxes a lot more than endless tables of black rifles and modern auto pistols.

[Winger Ed.]

A while in the tumbler, those bullets should clean up OK.

In the old days, I'd go to guns shows a hour or two before the event closed.

Back then, there were lots of guys that would buy a table or two to sell a few things, and clear out all their odds & ends like that.
I'd see a box of what everyone else though was junk, and ask them what their best deal on all of it was.

Often, it was hard to sell/unsorted items they just didn't want to carry it out, load it, and take it back home.
I'd get all sorts of dirty brass, obsolete bullets, and such for just a few bucks.

[Dusty Bannister]

Wet pin washing would make those jacketed bullets look like new. With what is left of the boxes, you might be able to determine which bullets were actually each caliber, weight, and have some nice bullets for your efforts.

[Wag]

Great find. I love when that kind of thing happens.

A few years ago, I was at the scrap yard buying lead and stumbled across three of those 5 gallon buckets like you get from Home Depot. They were about half full of assorted bullets, jacketed, half jacketed and pure lead. A lot of mini balls in there, too.

You always want to know the story behind the treasure. I'm assuming that and old caster passed away and his family didn't know anything else to do with all of it and dropped it off at the scrap yard.

I seem to recall I paid the going rate for lead, about $0.85/lb so in my never-to-be-humble opinion it was a steal. One of these days, I'll cull everything out and sell it.

One of these days............. :)

--Wag--

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

those poor poor boxes have given up the ghost.
nice find !

[jonp]

Good find. No wet here so I'd tumble them and load up. Those primers should be ok when dried out?
Last gunshow I found a guy in a wheelchair that bought estate stuff. Had moulds, odd dies etc and was willing to deal. Seems everyone wanted 9mm dies and bullets, not so many 25-35 dies or 8mm Mauser moulds. He even had a set of 50-90 dies for $25

[trapper9260]

You never know what will show up in some places . When you do find it you keep it to yourself and out the door you go with it then you let who you want know about it . I been to some sales and shows that was like that because alot did not know what they had .