Lets hear some stories. What got you into C&R?

[C&RTactical]

Call of Duty 2, loved shooting those old rifles.

 

[Hickory76]

Growing up with Indiana Jones movies > learning real history > getting involved with WWII reenacting > availability of innexpensive C&Rs covering the pages of "Shotgun News"... Even as an 18 year old, buying $40 Turkish Mausers or $60 Mosin Nagants with bayonet, sling, oiler, pouches, etc was affordable and was so much fun to clean up and find and identify markings, etc. Clearing away the cosmoline and uncovering unique carvings in rifle stocks, or little divets in the finger grip of a WW1 era Mauser where hands wore it down over time and imagining the stories that we'll never know. Then came the pride of shooting it at the range with my dad and feeling that brief connection with whoever was the last person to have fired that rifle perhaps on some wartime training range or even on a battlefield. What an interesting hobby to be a part of...I feel so fortunate to have had that experience.

 

[Melnic]

Saw a program where the investor guy was preaching investing in things you can enjoy. He was mentioning vacation homes (long term 20+ years) and high end art, the. Some crufflers here were talking about Mosins and it got me started. More so I’m interested in the history/ story behind the firearms and encourage other to research history of their C&R items as part of the collecting.
Guns generally do not do better than the stock market as a whole even though I have had a few 4x in 10 years. Yup, I was there for the $89 Mosins Black Friday less than a decade ago


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[BFMIN]

My Grandfather.

 

[mauser58]

These old Milsurp rifles have amazed me since a teenager. The looks and quality of fine old machinery. I didnt know anyone collecting Milsurp stuff when I started collecting in the late 70's. Went to every gun show around and used to go to Woolworth and go through the barrels of Military rifles. The actions on the Mausers and Springfields amazed me first. I was buying Mauser rifles up cheap back then. Then on to rifles from other countries one by one. It was addicting.

 

[Fushigi Ojisan]

Rec.guns

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[Alphabrew]

I plan to divest myself of a lot of C&R stuff this year. Going to start by consigning a nice Chinese Type 53 with matching numbers (only one I’ve personally seen with matching nums) at South Carrol Sporting Goods this week.

 

[dabean4]

M1/M1C's delivered to my door

 

[Fate]

Always was a WWII nerd growing up. Played army like many boys in the 70s. As an adult I started playing Medal of Honor: Allied Assault (MOH:AA) in the mid 90s with a tactical realism clan called {BdG}. Soon after I spotted a VZ-24 at Big 5 sporting goods and it was downhill from there. USGI, German, Russian, Finn, Chinese are where I mostly collected. Gunboards fueled my Mosin addiction. I first found this forum looking for info on my PSL-54c.

 

[Dave91]

I grew up in the 90s/2000s, so for me what did it was WW2 movies and video games that I was probably too young to be indulging in (but I think I turned out mostly OK). Around then interest in WW2 saw a spike thanks to Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. I watched those and played the Medal of Honor and the early Call of Duty games. I was also exposed to firearms at a young age, so the basis was already there.

 

[Hickory76]

I grew up in the 90s/2000s, so for me what did it was WW2 movies and video games that I was probably too young to be indulging in (but I think I turned out mostly OK). Around then interest in WW2 saw a spike thanks to Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. I watched those and played the Medal of Honor and the early Call of Duty games. I was also exposed to firearms at a young age, so the basis was already there.

Yes, I still have the Playstation Medal of Honor soundtrack burned into my memory haha! Yeah that was the time I got into WW2 reenacting - in 1999/2000. Was a good time to get into collecting back then...

 

[tallen702]

Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, and the Medal of Honor & Call of Duty games piqued my interest in the late 90s/early 2000s. Then, I had a buddy who had his C&R and literally had rifles stacked in every corner of his apartment. He was big into re-enactments and had the rifles, the uniforms, bayonets, etc. He's the only person I know who kept a loaded Thompson M1 on his nightstand as a PDW. He let me shoot all kinds of stuff (first time I shot a M1 Garand and an M1 Thompson). Even then, I didn't buy anything myself other than ammo to run through his guns when we'd hit the range every couple of months. Finally, around 2006 or 2007, I bought a M91/30 that I picked out of a barrel for $70 (included oiler, sling, and 40 rounds of corrosive surplus ammo). After that, it was on. First gun I bought with my C&R license was an 1895 Nagant made at Tula during the war. It was a post-war refurb and I HATED shooting it (they truly are terrible guns). It was $90 from one of the surplus companies. I think I sold it for $300 or so just a few years later.

 

[calicojack]

When I was about 4 years old I had bedsheets with pictures of Colt Single Action Armies and Winchester '73s all over them.

Then I was given a book called The How and Why Wonder Book of Guns, which detailed the entire history of guns from the earliest hand cannons through the most modern Single Action Armies and Winchesters. I was particularly fascinated by the wheellocks.

Still hoping for a good deal on surplus wheellocks, whenever the Holy Roman Empire clears out their warehouses.

The how and why wonder book of guns : Robbin, Irving : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

48p. 29cm

archive.org

Wow - I actually had a few of these books many many years ago!!

 

[calicojack]

To answer the original post; what got me into C&R? I just ended up picking up old guns along the way.

 

[Threeband]

Wow - I actually had a few of these books many many years ago!!

There were a bunch of them:

The How and Why Wonder Book of Electricity

The How and Why Wonder Book of Fish

The How and Why Wonder Book of World War II

Those are a few more I remember.

How and Why Wonder Books - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[noddaz]

My Dad's old rifles when I was a kid. My Dad explained what a Damascus barrel was to me when I was 7 or 8.

 

[6-Pack]

I got mine back in the day of $79 SKSs, $59 Nagants (sometimes $49 on sale), and $100 m1895 revolvers. Those days are long gone, but I got my money’s worth out of that license.

 

[U.S.SFC_RET]

It was the historical nostalgia that drew me in.

 

[Doctortoxic]

Pretty simple. The pandemic. It was a quick and easy way to stockpile firearms.

 

[spur0701]

Way back in '99 I changed jobs, my hours went way down and salary went way up. I wasn't used to having all this extra free time and money. Was driving home from work early one Friday after lunch and stopped at Maryland Small Arms to kill some time. They had a bargain rack and there was an Ishapore Enfield for something like $69 so I bought it. Researched it that weekend and found Gunboards and not longer afterward Cruffler.com, got my C&R and credit card out and went crazy. That C&R is long expired but I've gone through another 3 or 4 since then.....and I still have that Ishapore.