Jack you bring up many good points, especially regarding cut off points. And when a gun is a tool vs. an antique.
But for my mind, to try to keep things simple, lets use Dean Romig's 16ga hammer gun. It is a very early gun in high condition. Say Dean lost his mind and sold that gun to me, I went out and used it and wore 65% of the original finish off of that thing, put a couple of big old dings in the stock, I think that would be selfish. Future generations would not have the fortune to see that gun. Do these guns have to go to museums, I don't think so, but if one of us are so fortunate as to own one or two of these guns, I feel we owe it to future generations to preserve this type of quality in our realm of collecting.
That is just my opinion, I know there are some who say it's a gun and it was made to shoot, and I'm going to shoot her. Well there are plenty of "shooters" out there.
Tim
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