Albanian/Turkish inscription and proofs

eftihis · 27th April 2011, 02:55 PM

Well, i am sorry to say that the inscription...is not an inscription!
This is a balkan rifle and the barell locally made for an individual, not an "army contract". All over Balkans people at these times recognised the superiority of Western European made arms, made in organised workshops, and therefore clients prefered to buy "european" instead of local guns. Put it an other way, the seller could sell for more money if it was a "branded" european product. This leaded in 1) so many fake inscriptions (eg Lazaro Cominanzo etc), and 2) to the practise of just putting latin letters assembled with no order or sense on the barell! Well, the client was illiterate anyway, and even more on a foreign language! But he was happy because he had a gun with a "high quality imported european barell".
As for the prices of these guns, their prices rose untill recently due to demand from Greece, since they are guns that were used in our revolution of 1821. However, the economy as all know is very bad, and many people are not only stoped buying, but also start selling the ones they have.... This refers less to true collectors, and more to people that "invested" in these guns having a "stock exchange" mentality. SO my feeling is that prices will fall and normalise again. And more importand, only reall collectors that love them will buy them and not others with the idea of reselling latter.

27th April 2011, 02:55 PM	#7
eftihis Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Chania Crete Greece Posts: 511	Well, i am sorry to say that the inscription...is not an inscription! This is a balkan rifle and the barell locally made for an individual, not an "army contract". All over Balkans people at these times recognised the superiority of Western European made arms, made in organised workshops, and therefore clients prefered to buy "european" instead of local guns. Put it an other way, the seller could sell for more money if it was a "branded" european product. This leaded in 1) so many fake inscriptions (eg Lazaro Cominanzo etc), and 2) to the practise of just putting latin letters assembled with no order or sense on the barell! Well, the client was illiterate anyway, and even more on a foreign language! But he was happy because he had a gun with a "high quality imported european barell". As for the prices of these guns, their prices rose untill recently due to demand from Greece, since they are guns that were used in our revolution of 1821. However, the economy as all know is very bad, and many people are not only stoped buying, but also start selling the ones they have.... This refers less to true collectors, and more to people that "invested" in these guns having a "stock exchange" mentality. SO my feeling is that prices will fall and normalise again. And more importand, only reall collectors that love them will buy them and not others with the idea of reselling latter.