You don't have to be a rookie to have this happen to you. All it takes is trusting a stranger with an honest voice, and/or an honest face. There was a guy who answered my wanted ad last year for an inline I wanted to get my hands on; he told me it was clean inside and out. You can guess the story I heard; they took it out a few times, always cleaned it after they went shooting, so it was just like new. I drove about an hour and a half to his place, and his son was there with the rifle. I made the mistake of forgetting my bore light, and his wife was sitting there in the same room, shades drawn and a baby asleep on her lap. It was dim in there (the baby was sleeping, right?), but the outside of that rifle, just like he said, looked like brand new. No windows to look through the barrel, no rod for the breech plug wrench. None of it added up, but for some reason, like a total idiot, I handed over that wad of cash and headed out the door, where I found it was raining and dark gray, so I ran for the car and tossed it into my back seat.
I got home a couple of hours later, laid it on my gun bench, and went inside. Later on, I'd come back and give it a good cleaning, inside and out. That evening, I went out, removed the stocks, cleaned and scrubbed the outside, and then came the bore. I started with the breech plug, after I found a rod to make the plug wrench work, and I about gave myself a hernia getting that plug loose. The threads came out all rusty, and the face and blowhole were caked up with carbon buildup. Nobody had ever removed that plug, NOR had they put any lube on the threads, NOR had they cleaned the fire-channel. I was angry, but then I looked through the bore, and the blood froze in my veins. The bore was SO rusted, I couldn't even tell where the rifling was. I grabbed my brushed, and hoped it was not as bad as it looked. I've never seen a barrel this bad, and twenty minutes of scrubbing made no difference at all. This bore was utterly and completely ruined, worse than anything I'd EVER seen.
That's when I knew I'd been taken, using as slick a con as I've ever seen. What's worse, I aided them at every turn by forgetting my drop-in bore light, then by not demanding more light, and then by not stopping outside and looking before I left. And by trusting them.
I raised a fuss with the guy, and he finally agreed to give me my money back. Here's where it gets interesting. Another guy called me and told me that he was sent by the first guy to give me my money back, so I met him. Whoever this guy was, he was totally condescending to me, telling me that I didn't know anything about cleaning guns (Huh? WTF??), and that he'd take it from here. I started to tell the guy off, I was about to read him the riot act and let him know that I knew EXACTLY what I was talking about.
It was then that I realized what was going on. You see, the original guy had found a brand new sucker and convinced this guy that I knew nothing about guns, and that anybody who REALLY knew what they were doing could clean that barrel up spiffy in no time at all. Even more importantly, that brand-new buyer was about to hand me ALL of my money back (over $400), and he was fully informed of the rust in the barrel. You can guess what I did next.
I smiled and said, "Maybe you're right. I wish you good luck with it, anyway."
I counted my money, shook his hand, and left!
Not long after that, I found a truly just-like-new example of that rifle, with an immaculate barrel. Yeah, I brought my drop-in bore light this time!
Safe to say, I learned my lesson about trusting sellers, especially with black-powder weapons.
Thought you'd enjoy the story.
