$9000 for a Jr?

[Joseph Scott 0]

I was recently offered JR 0039 for $9000. "Flat mint, except somebody drilled something off behind front sight". Even if barrel had not been messed with, I told him I thought his price was too high unless it had some special documentation. He had not done any research on it. Bet it will show up soon on the net. Get your money ready!

[walt 0]

Joe,

It will interesting to see where #39 went and I wonder how much of it is original. Maybe Bob can enlighten us. I take it they did not have a serial number list or know any of the internal SN numbers. I agree 9K is way out of line. But you can never tell someone may really want to own it. The only thing I see going for it is having a low serial number. (Lowest I know of is 0022) Without any sort of documentation on its history it's going to be a hard sell. Lets see what Bob L. tells us. Maybe they have something or maybe they have a nice Johnson rifle.

Walt

[ArtR 0]

Well, for what it is worth, here is my take on 0039:

Someone will probably hype it up as a "low SN" JSAR, probably on one of the "brighter" auction sites, and being as some do not know anything at all about JSARS in general, or the SN issue in particular, someone will bite and buy. Then the word will get out about the high price someone got for their JSAR and the bidding wars will be on again.

What is really needed on the auction sites is a way for the public to make comments about items up for auction. Or at least a forum for buyers to ask questions about the items up for bid. It might slow down some of the price escalations, and it might make a few guys more honest in their descriptions.

[Bob Lamoreaux 0]

There is absolutely no info on 0039 in the production log. This is fairly common for rifles up to 0100. There are a few serial numbers in the range 0001 to 0099 that have info, most of these rifles being completed and transfered to the government of Chile, with a couple going to the NPC.

One can only speculate as to why there are so few receivers in this range being shown as completed and transfered. The two most reasonable "guesses" would be that in this early production of receivers, additional work had to be done on them to bring them into "spec" and they were finished late in the total production of JSARs (late 1942), possibly being entered into the "wrong" production log. Another "guess" would be that these were finished and assembled from Johnson parts in the '50s by someone purchasing the parts from Numrich. The Numrich parts would have been "mint/new".

Other "guesses" would be appreciated!!!

Bob