Yeah all I'm getting is depleted assortment of cutlery, plates, and flowerpots from German and Dutch house clearances... or "flea market" is a codeword?
That's because the companies that do the house clearances get first dibs on the contents; any antiques or valuables will end up on e.g. ebay or auction to be sold to collectors. The rest goes to the tip or via charity shops to the tip.
I'm confident the charity shop 'volunteers' make good scratch off of having first pickings on everything that comes in.
It feels the only people benefiting charities are those close to the source in the distribution chain, and the millionaires who own these charities of course. The rest have an opportunity to observe and buy the most useless, outdated, and trivial assortment.
It kind of is. Not in that way though. Flea-markets aren't really a thing in England at least by name. So this was probably a jumble sale or a car boot sale.
A jumble sale is a small indoor ad hoc second hand market probably not on any very regular schedule. They're usually run by small groups (church congregations, scouts, womens' institute) for fundraising and social purposes with the items donated and all the proceeds going to the group.
A car boot sale is held in a parking lot or field, where the sellers pay for the pitch and the buyers sometimes pay to enter. As the name suggests, many of the pitches will just be sellers with a car full of junk. They may be run commercially or by groups with access to suitable grounds (e.g. a rugby club). They're more work and staff to organise so they're often on a regular schedule (e.g. first Saturday of the month).
So it’s not common to have a building or area dedicated to renting a small square, setting up shop, with dozens to maybe even hundreds of others to sell your things?
In America we also have car boot sales, although “jumble sales” are called rummage sales here.
And yeah, whatever ya call them it’s always fun exploring and buying other people’s stuff. I especially love crystal glass bowls and jars. That and other shiny things bring out the corvid in me.
Not super common, but again that would be more an "antiques market" or similar (e.g. see Alfies Antiques Market in Marylebone, London) rather than a flea. It's not really that they don't exist, just that the catchall term isn't commonly applied.
Incidentally I now live in Sweden where Loppis (literally "flea") markets are common and delightful. Some are all year around affairs while others just pop up at the weekends in the countryside summer months as the population sweeps out of the cities for their summer vacations. I love poking around through other peoples' crap!
One last thought - my family used to swing by an antiques auction in Tring in Hertfordshire (the county this cannon was discovered in). Over the years a variety of bits and pieces were acquired there - some rather nice. After my parents died they did the house clearance for us. Dust to dust...
Sometimes that happened, but in general grapeshot is anti personnel so people used it even when they had cannon balls.
When cannonballs hit ships splinters often provided area of effect carnage. However, on an open field a cannonball would only harm a few people and could simply miss.
When I was a kid it was my premier way to get bulk fake Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards. What was crazy to me at the time is they were properly sealed in packs. Very obviously fake though. Thick, waxy, overly saturated with very low res and wrong fonts. Not to mention at least 4 years old. On the Pokémon cards the text and overall look was right though, so I still used them on the playground.
The Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, however, were the extremely fun poorly translated ones. “Spell Slame”, “GGGG”, “Rock Corrosion Devil - Love Fake”. I think my favorite though was a “Storm King” I traded for a legit Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon. I told the kid like 3 times it was fake, but he was bound and determined. Worked out for me, since I ran Blue-Eyes, but was just very weird.
Where I live, there are flea markets that banned all commercial reseller types. With time, those with the bans in place obsoleted all others without them. The people have spoken. If you'd like a proper flea market with lots of private sellers trying to get rid of miscellanious stuff from their basements, I recommend to suggest such a ban to the organizers in your area.
$2,500 is less than I would have guessed it'd be worth? Then again I'm not sure who the market would be, it's kind of an awkward item that I'm not sure how much it'd appeal to most gun buffs or medieval fans.
I'm no anitques expert, but I can imagine it's not worth much because it's just the barrel and it doesn't have any paperwork to go with it - where it came from, who owned it, who made it, where it was used, etc.
With artifacts like this, the story that goes with it makes up a lot of the value.
Those gun buffs or medieval fans with lots of money to spend are in the US. This auction was in the UK. Smaller market, fewer big spenders, and a much larger supply of antiques.
I think I would look at it, and think about it, and touch it pretty often, and that's before guests to my house would do the same and re-ignite my interest in it. Same reason I own a few pieces of art, I think? No particular interest in guns, but this thing is weird and cool
This happens a lot, lol. I'm confident that TV shows - including antiques shows, but also the pawn broker and the whole storage unit auctions - are a marketing means to get people to go to these things to up the value.
Storage units won't have anything valuable in them; it doesn't make sense for the owning company to not open it up themselves and pick out the most valuables. It does make sense to have a group of idiots who've seen carefully directed TV shows pay money for the rest of the crap and empty it out for them.
The few times I accidentally watched storage auction reality shows underneath I had a filthy weird feeling, comparable to watching a group of people gang banging a bigmac. I solved it by avoiding cable TV.
All antique firearms which are, sold, transferred, purchased or possessed as `curiosities` or `ornaments` are exempt (under section 58(2)) from the licensing and restrictions of use provisions in the Firearms Act 1968.
Anyone in possession of an antique firearm must be able to demonstrate that it is an antique fiream.
Prohibited person are not allowed to possess an antique firearm (essentially people with suspended sentences | within five years of completion of a sufficiently severe prison sentence | a person who has served a term of
imprisonment of over three years can never possess a firearm, including an air weapon or antique firearm or ammunition) unless they apply for and are granted an exemption.
Muzzle loaded pistols are legal to own in the UK, so if this is still considered a firearm there would still be no restrictions on it. I believe the gunpowder necessary to even attempt to fire it is heavily regulated though.
Knives, tasers, pepper spray are all illegal so you can be damn sure a robust container for a gunpowder explosion will be too. You are required by law to let the criminal harm you.
What they’re doing on a hand cannon beats me. They’re probably either decorative, meant for transport, or the blacksmiths making them just got used to making rings on cannons and kept doing it when scaled down.
