I was at the ripe old age of 13 at the time. I can remember looking through the Sears-Roebuck catalog and wishing I had every gun shown in that catalog. I would flip through the pages hundreds of times. At the time, I had 4 guns. A single shot .410 Topper that belonged to my grandmother, a double barrel 12 ga. Savage Model B that belonged to my granddad, a Marlin Golden Model 39A .22 lever action rifle, and a Winchester Model 94 30-30. Me and that Marlin decimated the squirrel population wherever we went.

Any 742 can be easily fixed to never jam again.According to Roger Kinney of Arab[gunsmith].He fixed mine by removing one little part that he said should never have been put in the rifle to begin with.It doesn't affect the working or the safety of the rifle.According to him it was manufactured in the design for assembly purposes.I trust his judgement so I let him fix it for me even though it had never jammed previously.I had heard about the reputation and didn't wanna find out in the woods that it was true.At least 75 deer have fallen to my 742 and never had an issue with it and many more to come.

I'd have bought a 18 wheeler full of them 10/22's at $59/each. You will spend more on that on a brick of ammo today.

I paid $96 for an 1100 in 1970. But I got it from the distributor so it was a bargain even then. He also got me a 660 .308 for under $100 the year before. I wish I hadn't traded it away. Still got the 1100.

IIRC... I remember going down to Robert's Sporting Goods in the 70's and they had barrels full of M1 Garands and M1 Carbines and some other US surplus rifles [Probably Springfields] and you could get anything in the barrels for $69 each. I wish I had bought every damn one of them.

When people start talking about prices "back when" it makes me laugh. Those things are inflation-adjusted more than they'd be now, and if you'd invested that $100 then it would probably be $5,000 now and you could buy any gun you wanted in 2016 with enough money left over to fill up your truck for the year.

Not really. More like $441.

I'll be dogged, you're right! Hard to believe it's not more than that.

So back to my point had I bought a bunch of those M1 Garands for $69 back then, they would be worth over $1000 each now. A pretty good investment in my mind.

Wow. I was born in 76.

I payed $49.95 for my 10-22 and $199.00 for my 742 carbine. I still have both. That 742 put a lot of meat on my tailgate.

Cool post, thanks

We were all looking at the wrong charts. The multiple for 4.4x is inflation adjusted.

The actual rate of return is like 20x, so I was only off by a factor of 2 really!

So, $100 in 1976 is worth $2,000 today. That can buy a really nice gun. Nicer than any of mine!

Why would we be looking at a rate of return? We haven't sold anything yet.

I bought my first single shot 20 gauge in 85 for $69. You know what up until a few years ago it was still $69.