Restore or Chop?

[04rubicon]

I picked up a H&R 158 Topper in 20ga on a trade. This old single shot has seen better days its been bubba'd, someone silver soldered a homemade rear sight on it and soldered a washer on top of a broken trigger. I'd like to trade it for something or sell it but it needs to have the value increased a bit first. My first thought was to remove the tacky sight then restore i,t re-blue it, strip down the stock and refinish it, replace to broken hammer. This would increase the value slightly but would be costly and time consuming, (any hints on where to find the hammer?)

Option two is to make it into a camp/truck gun and try to sell it as such. I'd remove the silly rear sight, cut the bbl down to 18-20 inches, maybe replace the bead, paint it flat black or olive drab or something and maybe replace the broken trigger.

What would make this old beater more valuable, I'd like to eventually try to trade it for Coleman stoves and lanterns or as a whole or partial trade towards a small generator (one of the early honda 300watt jobs or a crappy tire $150 generator) Anyone?

 

[BCRider]

Even without any bubba mods and in decent condition they are only worth $70 to $100 from what I've seen on the EE. You could easily spend close to that much fixing it up only to end up selling it for the cost of the improvements with no gain at all. Not to mention what your time is worth that could be spent on some other project that would move you further ahead. So I'd say sell it as a project gun for around $35 to $40 and put your time and money into something else. Is the extra $50 to $60 at most you'd get from it really worth the time? Even if you made it look super special you'd be lucky as blazes to get anything over $140.

Or if you want to mod it and keep it for yourself at least for a while you could do something that backpacker special mod similar to the job done by one of the folks around here recently. Cut down the barrel to a mm or two over the 470 legal length and then cut down the stock to get the overall length down to a fraction over the legal 26 (or is it 26.5?) legal length. Or look at slightly shortening the stock and adding a really decent recoil pad for a tight in shoulder perch short shottie. At least with the short shoulder perch setup you can later on go for the pistol grip mod if you don't like it.

 

[jethunter]

In "like new" condition it's only worth $125 or so. You're never going to be able to make it "like new" again.

Proper repairs are going to cost more time and money than the increased value you get from repairing it. If you can remove the bubba'd crap easily, do so. Clean it up as best you can and sell it. Don't bother refinishing anything. Leave that to the prospective buyer.

When you sell it, advertise it "as is", and include info on all known problems. Something in the $40-$50 range sounds reasonable, but depends on how rough that shotgun really is.

 

[04rubicon]

btt