I have no intention of selling the collection. I actually bought it. It's a kind of weird situation.
Short version-My mom and 'step dad' Paul have been together for 43 years, but never married. So he and I aren't legally relatives. He had 3 daughters from his first marriage and his son-in-law Neil is the exectutor of his estate. Once the trust was sorted out and his daughters could began selling his cars, trailers and his Harley they contacted me. His truck, Harley and a couple small trailers sold quickly. I inquired about the guns and safe and we set up a day to meet up at his house. We laid all the guns on the table and Neil said he had looked some of them up for values. He is not a gun guy at all, just doing his due diligence for his wife and SIL's as hes's the exectutor. He would say oh this one is at $600, how about $300? I'd say yes and we'd move to the next gun. This one is around $900, how about $600, and repeat. He was able to get 'values' for about half the guns. Once we had agreed on everything and had a total, which I'm not sharing, Neil said we'd need to go to a gun store and get them into his wife's name and then into my name. I told him I had cash on hand and we could avoid all that. He was plesanly surprised, done and done. A few days later I went back at night so it wasn't weird walking out of a house carrying 10 long guns, and picked up all my stuff.
Besides sellng the house there is a lot more stuff. Paul was a carpenter and has a huge 240v table saw and lots of wood working tools. Some are 20-30 years old, some are newer. Hopefully they can find a person that will make them a fair offer to buy it all.
When I was young Paul used to restore 55 and 57 Chevy's. He stopped and sold his cars when I was around 13 yrs old. He's had a few cars over the years and recently had my son help him get them ready to sell a few. He sold his 1953 Chevy coupe last summer and just had his 1956 Ford F100 left. I'm not a Ford guy but I've always liked this particular truck. He bought it around 1994/95 when he saw it on the side of the road near my Mom's house in Altadena. He cruised it around for a few weeks and I drove it to his house in Montrose. It was a 'three on the tree' and had a small block Chevy. Around 1999-2000 a good friend of mine had a hotrod shop in Montrose and Paul had him cut the front end up and install a Fat Man Mustang II suspension kit. He also bought a target 350 SBC from another buddy of mine. The truck was parked in his backyard, torn apart, and has been sitting there for the past 20+ years. In 20I8 tried to get him to sell it to my son for a first vehicle but Paul said he was going to put it together. He never touched it.
Paul's son-in-law Neil asked me if I know of anyone interested in buying the 56 Ford and I said I'm sure I do, what are you gus asking for it? He said Paul told them it was worth $10k. I said what's my price and he threw me a number I could not say no to. One more project I have zero for. First thing I need to do is make time to go over and find all the frint suspension stuff so I can make it a roller and get it to my house. Then I'll need to dig out all the other parts.
