"oldspook"Precious doesn't win matches or bring home meat, accuracy does. Precious isn't cheap. If you scratch precious, precious is devalued. If you scratch accurate, accurate still wins matches and brings home meat. I spend my money on accurate rifles. I do like pretty rifles but I can't justify a precious rifle so I just don't buy them. I don't like synthetic stocks but to be brutally honest they are a true improvement over wood if you consider the price performance ratio. I've seen some lovely PB rifles that people bought as investments. They kept them in a sleeve, in a climate controlled closet and never shot them. Might as well buy gold, you don't need the climate controlled closet.
All that said, If precious floats your boat, happy sailing for sure.
Well we went from Star wars to Lord of the rings
Thanks to all, this has been a good informative thread believe it or not. One of the biggest balks I run into when talking with folks about my airguns (and its a question that always seems to come up) is cost.
Most of the time I can calm them down a little when we start comparing actual shooting cost and how in the long run things tend to level out, but still they tend to turn a little blue in the face themselves even handling my relatively speaking cheaper air rifles. Still for me at this time at least I believe I will stick within my current range. Its where I am comfortable at both in budget and mindset ( Although I tend to turn a few shades of green when someone fumbles one of my guns)