Thread: 140 year old Consecutive pair of rifles. What are the chances?

Sunday I went to the Timaru Antique Arms Auction to pick up a couple of purchases from a guy coming up from Southland.
There was also an item in the auction that I was interested in bidding on if I hadn't spent too much cash on the sales tables.

One of the pick up was a Marlin Ballard no4 38-55 rifle circa 1885.
Now I already had a very nice complete MB no4 38-55 but you don't pass up on these when you get the chance to buy one.
This more recent purchase was minus a fore end, sights and had a broken hard rubber butt plate.
But the price was ok and MBs don't come up for sale often.

These No4s ( hunting model ) are the forged steel frame, single trigger, shotgun butt variation, so was always the preferred model anyway.

This morning the Ballard was the last of the three rifles I had brought home that I got around to stripping and looking at its various good and bad points.
Minus fore end. The Ballard fore end is prone to cracking at the front edges on the heave octagonal barrel.
Minus all sights.
Broken hard rubber monogrammed butt plate. A USA company makes repops but permits and USA !
Mechanically good
Bore very good
So on the whole a very nice Ballard and I have the exact same model already to reverse engineer the repairs from.

Well I get the other MB no4 out and put them together for a few images and see if there are any slight variations in the hammers, levers or triggers ( these evolved over time even in the same model numbers ).
Peas in a pod other than the walnut stock colour as one is oiled and one has some varnish on it.





Then I looked at the serial numbers on the new ( old ) rifle and it also has a complete numbers matching set of parts.
No 23692



And check that against the serial number of the same model, same caliber and same variations rifle I restored last year which was also a complete matching parts number rifle.
No 23693



At that point I realised I had brought the two rifles from the other ends of NZ. One from Northland and one from Southland and approx 140 years since they were manufactured and consecutively numbered rifles

Now this sort of thing does happen.
But it happens to someone else.
Well this time I am "that someone else"