L42A1 current value?

[Promo]

Yes sometimes its eye catching when done like that, but if the rifle has good clean blonde wood now, I would leave it as it was.
My L42 was written off during the Falklands War and brought back to life by Peter Laidler on return to the UK, so one has to assume Peter changed the wood when the new action was fitted, he can't remember it individually as I have asked him as he must have dealt with thousands of them over the years.
So my view would be leave it as it was with all its patina and knocks......blonde is blonde!

I would agree with you, but I don't think it was Peter nor any other armourer who had sanded the stock of this rifle to make it blonde since they either would replace it or leave it as it is. So when looking at this rifle again the stock was cleaned post being withdrawn from service by a private individual. And my simple suggestion was to "repair" what bubba had done to it since in my opinion it detracts value.

[Peter Laidler]

I 'acquired' a superb Asahi Pentax Spotmatic camera with a lens (was it 1.2, .4 or .6,) that you could almost take pictures in the dark with. My friend Al 'acquired' a Minolta SRT101 that he said was better than the spotmatic. He described mine as a POLEX watch as against his ROLEX!!!!!!! Cheeky toerag!

[chosenman]

I don't think green sniper tape had entered the service in my time, if it did the QM was just sitting on it.

We used black masking tape, or black nasty as I recall it was called by the lads. The only time I ever used it was in NI to mask out the broad arrow and MOD marking that had been engraved on the top of my issue Pentax Spotmatic camera with an electric pencil. The very same camera that I was supposed to mingle with the press with and pretend I was one of them!

Have a look in The British Sniper, A Century of Evolution and you will see historical pictures of L42’s clad in green sniper tape.

[Strangely Brown]

Have a look in The British Sniper, A Century of Evolution and you will see historical pictures of L42’s clad in green sniper tape.

Indeed; I'm looking forward to your L96 edition now to go with the first one!

[chosenman]

Indeed; I'm looking forward to your L96 edition now to go with the first one!

Slow progress at the moment with one thing and another but it’s shaping up well.

[bigduke6]

Always hard to put a price on something like this, I PM'd Mike as I have a Chest for a L42, I bought sometime back from a fellow member on here, as I was holding on for a similar rifle that was without its chest and scope etc.

In the end the owner didn't want to sell but offered me £1200 for the chest......and I'd offered him £2500 for the rifle.......... at the time a scope and bracket was around £2000 so an expensive way at that time, as a full CES was around the £5000 mark.

Going by a most recent price of a sale of a L42 by a member and dealer on here, full CES (minus the expensive plastic bottle) was £8500 IIRC, I would say the rifle as it is would be around £3000-£3500 tops, its lost its shine as I would say the woodwork has been replaced outside the Armourer shop, no scope and no sign of what number scope was fitted, to find a correct scope and mount would be like trying to prize blood out of a stone, as the owner is probably looking for the correct rifle for it or would only let it go to the correct rifle, then its the chest to acquire,

Chest approx £1000 +, scope and mount £2500- £3000.

Ideal for anyone who has the bits above...... ( so I'd be interested)

[Mikehaspey]

On the subject of the colour of the wood, I did spend a while looking at this when I first purchased the rifle.
There are a lot of L42s out there with mismatched wood, it’s usually that same piece, but not always:
I’ll attach some pics that a simple google search turns up.

The way I see it, if a private individual decided to clean the top section up, they would have done it for aesthetics - and in that case they would have taken the time to make the wood match afterwards? I know I would anyway, otherwise why bother to tidy it up at all?

I was never a sniper but I was in the military and a rifle was a working tool, it wasn’t meant to look pretty, we certainly didn’t worry what a private collector would think of it’s condition further down the line.... so to me, the wood was much more likely to be have done this way whilst in military service, perhaps towards the end of its career when they used up whatever spares they had to hand.

This is the reason I have left it as is anyway, a future owner might decide to stain the wood to match, which is fine, but not for me.... that difference in tone is part of this rifles history (imho).

P.S. I’m not adverse to doing work like that when required, my 1917 SMLE had been rubbed back and varnished at some point, that was stripped and is now back looking the way it should be

[Mikehaspey]

Always hard to put a price on something like this, I PM'd Mike as I have a Chest for a L42, I bought sometime back from a fellow member on here, as I was holding on for a similar rifle that was without its chest and scope etc.

In the end the owner didn't want to sell but offered me £1200 for the chest......and I'd offered him £2500 for the rifle.......... at the time a scope and bracket was around £2000 so an expensive way at that time, as a full CES was around the £5000 mark.

Going by a most recent price of a sale of a L42 by a member and dealer on here, full CES (minus the expensive plastic bottle) was £8500 IIRC, I would say the rifle as it is would be around £3000-£3500 tops, its lost its shine as I would say the woodwork has been replaced outside the Armourer shop, no scope and no sign of what number scope was fitted, to find a correct scope and mount would be like trying to prize blood out of a stone, as the owner is probably looking for the correct rifle for it or would only let it go to the correct rifle, then its the chest to acquire,

Chest approx £1000 +, scope and mount £2500- £3000.

Ideal for anyone who has the bits above...... ( so I'd be interested)

Highwood Classics have a non complete CES up at £8750.

You’re looking at £2500 for correct scope & mount (one sold on eBay last week)
£1k for an original transit case, the only other bits in that particular setup are the scope tin and sling, so you’re looking about £400 worth, so let’s say £4K total.

That means they’re putting a value of £4750 on the rifle alone... but of course it does have the luxury of it having its correct scope & mount known, whereas mine doesn’t.

Anyone else have any ideas on the value of rifle alone?
Thanks

[Roy W]

The problem with asking for values is that anyone who is vaguely interested will either abstain or undervalue it, for obvious reasons. Those who give favourable valuations probably have no intention of buying it, so having no horse in the race will undoubtedly value it higher than others.

The only true way of finding out is an auction, but then you are playing Russian Roulette and get hammered for fees.

What does it owe you, what do you need to get for it?

We had a thread on here recently about a Unicorn Maltby No.4 where no amount of valuations were ever deemed good enough and it didn't sell at the higher price.

No.4T's without a scope and mount can be had from £1500 upwards. L42 without a scope, mount or anything else? £3k ?

Everyone will be guessing unless they just sold one.

Devizes sold a lovely patina'd all matching L42 with correct scope and mount last year for £6500 without any CES. That puts yours, I would say, at £3k because even with a scope and mount it will never be all matching.

[Gil Boyd]

Oh well on that basis........everything including the kitchen sink can't miss the centre of a figure 12 at 600m metres and a great war story to boot. Its yours for £15K.