Wow $53,083.00

 

Five photos of the incorrect barrel?

 

The seller, who is generally acknowledged to be a very reputable guy, acknowledges the pistol has several replacement parts, one of which is the High Standard barrel. "The barrel has also been replaced and is a WWII "HS" marked High Standard contract barrel." Well, so what? It isn't as if he was trying to run a con on any unsuspecting potential buyer. And nowhere in his description is the term "mostly original" used. The pistol appears to be as described..."While this pistol may not be pristine, it's a legitimate, original finish Singer and a rare 1911A1 by anyone's standards!" Whoever bought it can't ever say he didn't know what he was getting.

 

Wow, I wasn't implying any wrong doing by the seller. Quite the contrary, as I've purchased from "Jack" several times and have been extremely pleased. The term "mostly original" was my determination after reading the seller's description. The point of my thread was that the Singer was still bringing VERY good $$$ despite the lack of 100% originality as completely described by the seller, and intended to be a compliment...

 

I know you weren't and I didn't mean to imply you were hinting the seller isn't an up-and-up guy. Sometimes I don't express myself very well, okay? Buried somewhere here in my computer is a Singer I photographed at an LGS several years ago, it'd just come into the shop. It was beautiful, but a previous owner had crudely scratched his initials on the frame above and a little forward of the trigger guard. But as you say, they'll continue to bring super-premium prices...the one I just mentioned ended up getting sold for...I think it was somewhere between $41K-$45K, without ever being put up online.

 

I agree, those Singers bring the top dollars. The slide is what is golden. I'd say just an original Singer slide would still go for many times more than what an original Remington Rand would. Just one or two replaced parts on a holy grail gun doesn't really matter. As you were saying too.

 

If an item is placed for sale on the internet isn't it open for discussion, or does it depend on who is selling it?

 

How about the Magazine ? JTD does not claim it is a SINGER Mag. Apparently, some believe it is (definitely) a SINGER Mag.,...others believe it is Not.

 

1. 'Collector's item now' does not mean 'collector's item then' and so it probably was neither treated nor preserved like one. The really huge dollars go for the preserved anomalies, not so much for the run of the mill.
2. Do we forget the Canadian North American Arms 1911 of which 100 or so were made? By way of comparison, they are far rarer than than the Singers.

 

'Collector's item now' does not mean 'collector's item then' and so it probably was neither treated nor preserved like one.

Very true. The people who built the 55,000 Union Switch & Signal pistols had no earthly idea they were building pistols that would be worth between $6,000.00 and $8,000.00 almost eighty years later. Ditto for just plain ol' Remington Rands and Ithacas.

But the 500 Singers that I understand were issued mostly to flight crews weren't looked at as anything special. I'd even venture to say most of them were hardly ever fired. Maybe someone thought to clean one every now and then. Sitting around the hut maybe, cleaning pistols..."Hey look fellas, Singer even made their own barrels!" Nobody cared about that during the war. All they wanted was to survive their next mission.

 

While the Singer was an issue pistol of the U.S. military, the North American Arms pistol never made it into production before the contract was cancelled and was never a U.S. issue pistol.

 

Point well made. There's always that "issued" factor to consider.

 

Even given the replaced barrel (the HS was a correct field replacement) -- I'm a bit
surprised that it didn't sell for more. After all, the prices for minty examples have
exceeded $400k in the big auctions. The large "blood stain" on the slide was a
bit off-putting, but a decent gun that was issued and used as intended.

I agree that the prices for the North American Arms pieces are a bit crazy considering
they were never officially accepted and issued. I guess some people just "got to
have one" to complete their collections.

 

I can imagine at the time that they were derided as "sewing machine guns" even though sewing machines were high precision devices.

 

More than likely most didn't even know who made them. S. MFG. CO. doesn't tell you much. I was issued a M1911 A1 when in Vietnam, it was a Colt. Up to that time I thought all of them were made by Colt. I did see that some guys had pistols made by other manufacturers and saw the same with M14 rifles. Had I seen a Singer (and no, we didn't have any in the armory that I know about) I wouldn't have guessed it or for that matter a US&S. After reading Bady's book on the subject years later, I thought there would an M1911 marked with a USMC slide. Never did find one of those either.

 

In years past it wasn't uncommon for someone in the army reserve or guard to mention that they had a "Singer" in their armory. When ask how they knew it was a Singer the reply was always "it said so right on the side!".