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Thread: Herter's hand loader

  1. #1
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    Herter's hand loader

    Lookie what I found at the recent local gunshow, a new addition for my Herter's collection.
    A NIB, unused, Herter's hand loader kit for 222rem.

    I didn't know Herter's made these (um, I mean had them made and private labeled)


    Attachment 289748

    Attachment 289749
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    “If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”
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  2. #2
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    Those tools sure look familiar! I wonder whether old George made a deal with Richard Lee early on to furnish his tool under contract and to be labeled and marketed as Herter’s? It wouldn’t be the first such arrangement he made. They must not have sold many of them though; that’s the first one I’ve ever seen or even heard of.

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    That Herter’s loader couldn’t possibly have been made by Lee.

    Lee and all other competitors made poorly-designed, nearly unusable tools out of inferior materials by the labor of untrained incompetents, to be foisted at outrageous prices upon naive and ignorant handloaders by unscrupulous, money-grubbing scoundrels.

    Herter’s tools were made by highly-skilled old-world craftsmen out of the finest materials, strictly in accordance with the most ingenious modern designs, and were offered at fair and equitable prices to the most knowledgeable handloaders in the world. They were the preferred tools to use by everyone from the crowned heads of Europe to the subsistence hunters in Tierra Del Fuego.

    The surface resemblance is mere coincidence.

    Man, I miss old George L!

    That is a rara avis , though. I’ve only seen them in the Herter’s catalogs.

  4. #4
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    Now that I think about it, I don't think I have ever seen one for sale at all the gun shows in the last 40 years. The only one I have ever seen is the one I bought at the old Herters store in Mitchell, in 1976, for loading 410 shells. Still have it somewhere. I think they cost something like $7.95, and a Lee Loader was a few dollars more.

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    Dave, your prose is good, but not exactly right. George called these the Low Cost Shotshell Loader. For the man who wished to load just a few shells and not spend a lot of money.
    They were in the 1967 catalog as a shotgun loader only, 1969 saw the line expanded to cover the most popular rifle and handgun cartridges. It must have sold decently as they remained in the catalog after the move to Mitchell and George was no longer involved with the company.

    I have a 12ga, 30-06 and .223 set. I have never tried to use them, though they look well-made and should produce quality ammo.

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    In 1964, saw my first Herter's catalog in a barber shop in Burlington, NC. I soon had my own copy. I still have one that's somewhat tattered but still quite readable.

    That wish book was a cornucopia of outdoor supplies; a vast assortment of fishing, hunting, boating, hobby gunsmithing, guns, reloading supplies, etc., like no other source in the world. My annual copies spent most of their life in the potty magazine rack and I had many a long session scanning its pages of low cost items every young man desperately needed. I still miss it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Bent Ramrod View Post

    Man, I miss old George L!
    I miss him too,
    Now days you just can't find #1, Mark 10, Guide Model Perfect
    stuff anywhere

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    I was fortunate enough to pass through Waseca, MN on my way to a new job in Nov. 1974 and detoured right to the Herter's building. It was really nice that they were open and I was about the only customer in there that afternoon. Amazingly they had a number of left handed Weatherby rifles in their rack.
    NRA Endowment Life Member

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    Sadly, the building and a bad memory is all that's left of Herter's today. The 20 somethings have never heard of Herter's. The older folks are mad about the way the company closed out. "the mob was involved".

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    Quote Originally Posted by Pressman View Post
    Sadly, the building and a bad memory is all that's left of Herter's today. The 20 somethings have never heard of Herter's. The older folks are mad about the way the company closed out. "the mob was involved".
    I Googled "Herter's" to try to find a little more about them & their demise. I could not find anything "mob" related. Could you expand on this? My last name doesn't end in a vowel if that puts you more at ease.

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    You’re right, Ken, I’ve only achieved a poor approximation.

    Somehow, George L. could insult all his competitors by implying their stuff was shoddy, and all his prospective customers by implying that they were ignorant rubes who couldn’t make the right choices without him, but shining through all that was a real sincerity, a solid impression that he left with the reader that he really was trying to help.

    The combination of this sincerity and his sometimes skewed opinions (on everything) is hilarious, to me at least. It’s always a red-letter day when I can find a new Herter’s book. The people that gripe about “mansplaining” ought to read a few of them to toughen themselves up. Now that world tensions are ramping up again, I’ll need to review the appendix in the back of his Bull Cook cookbook set that tells the reader how to survive an atomic attack.

    I hadn’t heard of any mob influence in the store closing either. I’d heard the business was George L.’s life, but none of the rest of the family wanted to take it over when he retired. It also didn’t help that some of the fly-tying supplies he offered were suddenly in violation of the Endangered Species act, and the 68 GCA put a serious crimp in the mail-order gun business.

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    One of the mobs that killed Herter's was an alphabet government agency that found ol' George was selling "illegal" imported feathers to hobbist trout fly tiers. Doesn't matter if he was guilty or not (nor if his sin was valid), they were determined to destroy him.

    Federal agencies (the biggest criminal mobs on the planet) deliberately abused the power of government to bankrupt him because he was very successfully selling discounted guns and much other outdoor stuff directly to the public. And, in the days of the very corrupt LBJ (D-TX) administration, it was said that he sometimes gave money to Republicans!

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    There is almost nothing available except from some old newspaper clippings and excerpts from a conversation with Goerge's son. These can be found in the archives of the Waseca Historical Society. Conversations with people who worked there during that time are always in hushed tones and whispering behind their hand.

    Herter's pension fund was a ripe plumb for the picking and it got picked and disappeared into a Private Equity Firm in Chicago. It is known that George's mental state played a big part in the demise of the company. He was considered to be Manic Depressive and getting worse. That made him easy pickin's. I have not been able to link the disappearance of the pension fund to the people that eventually took over control, the principal one being the same person who went on to found Cabela's. Which coincidentally suffered the same fate as Herter's.

    All of the original Herter's employees lost their entire pensions. There were lawsuits that went nowhere. It was just gone.

    The new management thought there were too many problems in Waseca for the company to work through, so they took it to Mitchell, SD. At this point Herter's had shrunk to a very small shadow of its former size. In early 1981 the local paper announced with great joy that Herter's was returning the operation to Waseca. In March 1981 Herter's closed the doors forever.

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    Pressman, the account I gave of Herter's legal problems over imported endangered bird feathers was in a magazine article I read at the time. Knowing what I know about government agencies makes the story plausible (see the recent attack on Gen. Flynn) but .... I don't know. Can you verify or disprove it?

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    1hole I don't have any written record of that. I believe it was in the early 1970's that it happened. Several years before the end.

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    If you have a thing to sell
    And go and whisper in a well
    Your not so apt to get the dollars
    As he who climbs a tree and HOLLERS

    George Herter

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by Pressman View Post
    1hole I don't have any written record of that. I believe it was in the early 1970's that it happened. Several years before the end.
    That time line fits. And it goes a long way toward explaining George's manic/depressive events at the end of his business. I don't have a high opinion of government agencies, none of them, and the way they attacked Herter's (and Gen. Flynn more recently) is only part of it. At times I've worked closely with the GSA, NASA, NSA, USPO, CIA, OSHA, the US Forest Service and the Park Service; I found little difference in the attitudes of their upper managements.

    I got out of the USAF in '63 with good skills in airfield control tower radios. Applied for a job with the government regional air traffic control system in N.E. Florida (all true, to this point) but they turned me down for being over qualified; they found that my parents were not only married ... they were married to each other!

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    I didn't realize how much of my reloading gear came from Herters . I was given a Pacific Press but being in High School , no job , no car , no interweb and the only Gunshop to buy stuff was across town, lots of Herters "stuff" was cheaper than Gunshop's brand name gear . I have more Herter's boolit moulds as Lyman and just as many sets of dies as name brand . shell holders , plastic cartridge boxes , case trimmers , case length gauges , neck reaming tools ...
    the boolit moulds and some of the tools look just like Lyman ..but were much cheaper ...
    I would fill out an order form and Mom would write a check to Herters ... and I would mail it off ... and wait ! that would be my allowance for the week ... But I could always count on dad to slip me a few bucks ...Said a fellow had to have a little "walking around money" in his pocket on Saturday night .
    I miss Herters and the catalog .... I am hanging on to a 1968 catalog I found on a closet shelf ... just for Old Time's Sake .
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  19. #19
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    I enjoy memory lane as much as anyone. but Jon b sure did find a beautiful example of a finely crafted reloading tool. I grew up using lees version in 222 rem. reminds me of my first belding and mull visible powder measure that was in a pristine box with all the paper work and micrometer drop tube that I got for $0.00 . Im kicking myself for selling it during Obama shortage, just could not resist the $300 and I had another one that's not as pretty.

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    Quote Originally Posted by farmbif View Post
    I enjoy memory lane as much as anyone. but Jon b sure did find a beautiful example of a finely crafted reloading tool. I grew up using lees version in 222 rem. reminds me of my first belding and mull visible powder measure that was in a pristine box with all the paper work and micrometer drop tube that I got for $0.00 . Im kicking myself for selling it during Obama shortage, just could not resist the $300 and I had another one that's not as pretty.
    Yep, I have a similar story. At one time, I had three Ideal #1 lubesizers. One of them was so pretty and complete, it looked like new, I couldn't resist selling it for a good profit. I kept only one of them, it was ugly and had parts replaced that were homemade and two areas of the cast Iron show Brazing repairs, (one area was the piece that holds the TP.) I kept it for two reasons. One was, the repairs were well done. Two, it had the best alignment of the three I had... having that near perfect alignment was due to the excellent repair work, so whoever did that, surely was a craftsman.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    “If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”
    ― The Dalai Lama, Seattle Times, May 2001

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