Certainly the exchange rate is reflected in the price one must pay for anything, that goes without saying ! However, there are things that the price is driven more by other things,IMO! Double rifles is one of those things that has balooned in price, from about 1980 till about 2000. They are stabelizeing today, and IMO the grouth rate is softening somewhat! The 300% to 500% grouth rate will never again be seen on double rifles. I say this because the ecconomy is not what drove the prices so high to begine with. The fact is, there was an influx of double rifles suddenly coming on the market, when they were outlawed in INDIA, back in the early 80s. Bought for pennies on the dollar, they didn't have to sell for much money to gain by 200%, and still be a bargain. I bought a H&H Royal in the case with all the tools, and an extra set of fireing pins for $900 us, in 1958 because nobody had ammo for it, and it was simply a conversation piece that you couldn't shoot. In the 60s,70s, and early 80s, you could buy doubles chambered for things like 450/400 for a song and sing it yourself, because it was so hard to make ammo for it, nobody wanted it! Bell, Woodliegh, and a couple others reccognized the market potentual for compmnants, and opened up a business. Onece ammo became more available, the prices startrd to bounce over the house. Then once a few started playing with the cheap doubles they were lucky enough to get back when, and others startrd to learn more about double rifles in the USA, the prices began to go through the roof.

The old prices Micky quoted are little higher than those rifles sold for when new, and they were at the time when ammo was still hard for most to come by. I would like to see an add that listed those same double rifles five years after they were made.

I dare to say they were not collector items, but simply five year old USED rifles, and sold at a 25% to 30% less than a new one, exactly like the used NEW double rifles of today. I believe the old Britts will increase much more slowly in the next 15 years, and when the NEW rifles sold today are 50 yrs old you will see a 200% increase in their price as well. In that same fifty yrs the brits will apprecieate no more tha 10% from today, because they are nearing the stratosphere today. I personallly have a NEW double rifle that I paid only $4695 US for two years ago( a bargain at the time), and is now selling in the area of $7000US in two years, and another that I paid only $7000US new,ten yrs ago, that now will sell for around $12000US today,USED, with a new one like it selling for $16000us. THe new rifles ARE driveing the market, and if you are willing to pay 10 times what a prewar Britt rifle cost in 1980,today, you can, but another 25 yrs down the road it will not draw a price even 50% above what you pay today. ALL THIS depending on our being able to legally own any firearms at all, at any price, 25 yrs down the road!

Of course if I knew anything I'd be a millionaire, instead of liveing on a fixed income of retirement. None the less that's how I see it!