I saw one such collection, once;
every item had its history neatly written out on a tag and hung onto the
trigger-guard. The owner thought that the patent-dates on Colts were
model-dates, and the model-dates on French military arms were dates of
fabrication."
Pierre wrinkled his nose disgustedly. "God, I hate to see a collection
all fouled up with tags hung on things!" he said. "Or stuck over with
gummed labels; that's even worse. Once in a while I get something with a
label pasted on it, usually on the stock, and after I get it off, there's
a job getting the wood under it rubbed up to the same color as the rest
of the stock."
"Yes. I picked up a lovely little rifled flintlock pistol, once," Rand
said. "American; full-length curly-maple stock; really a Kentucky rifle
in pistol form. Whoever had owned it before me had pasted a slip of paper
on the underside of the stock, between the trigger-guard and the lower
ramrod thimble, with a lot of crap, mostly erroneous, typed on it. It
took me six months to remove the last traces of where that thing had been
stuck on."
"What do you collect, or don't you specialize?"
"Pistols; I try to get the best possible specimens of the most important
types, special emphasis on British arms after 1700 and American arms
after 1800.
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