I bought another 416 Rigby by accident - Oh well, it turned out to be a great deal after all.

Hello All,

Originally posted on another forum, but thought to share the story here also.

As you may have seen many of my posts in the past, I'm always looking for Brevex rifles. One day last month I saw this auction listing where they had mistakenly listed this rifle as Belgium Mauser chambered in an UNKNOWN 416 belted cartridge. They later added a correction that it was a BREVEX, not a Mauser.

The Auction had an opening bid of $2000. I tagged the rifle with that opening bid because I was gong to watch the auction LIVE on proxibid, and I was prepared to bid much higher. I was intrigued by the UNKNOWN 416 belted cartridge designation thinking there were only 3 possible cartridges that it could be. The 416 Taylor, the 416 Rem Mag, and the 416 Weatherby Mag. I dismissed the Taylor thinking why would someone use a Magnum Brevex action for such a short cartridge. I guesses it had to be one of the other 2, and that would be great.

Well, come auction day .... no one bid. It stayed right at that opening bid.

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When the rifle arrived today, I looked at the bolt face and it was BIG. I figured I snagged a 416 Weatherby. I tested it with a 416 Weatherby Mag cartridge - - the bolt wouldn't fully close, so, I did a chamber cast. Much to my surprise - NO BELT ... It turned out to be a straight-up 416 Rigby - one of my favorite cartridges. This rifle makes number seven chambered in 416 Rigby - and number 10 in Brevex rifles.

And take a look at what I got ! ... WOW ... WOW ... I can't believe no one else bid on this... it must have been that "UNKNOWN" stigma that frightened away all the other possible bidders. .. and by-the-way .... it turns out this rifle is UNFIRED ...

When I removed the barrelled action from the stock, I found that the bottom of the action was covered in black soot from the stock in-letting, and there was a lot of gummy release agent from when the rifle was fully glass bedded. Only when I took the first pictures did the camera flash show that there was something scratched on the action bottom. I scrubbed the bottom to clean it, but without the camera flash, it was still hard to see the engraving. These Brevex actions are super hard and the engraving is very light.

The Good News for me was .. the auction house "looker" must have had very bad eye sight. He saw a "Belt" in the chamber, that wasn't there, and didn't see the caliber marking, that was.