GTA
Airguns by Make and Model => Vintage Air Gun Gate => Topic started by: Idalogger52 on January 28, 2020, 07:52:26 PM
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Anyone have any info on a Beeman “Original Model 35”???
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It's a rebranded Diana 35. Nice shooters, accurate, not much power, pre-dates the 'magnum power' craze that continues to this day. Some had nice, adjustable triggers, others didn't. Probably has a leather piston seal.
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Any idea what it might be worth? It’s in mint condition.
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See this now-nearby thread on the very same model:
https://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php?topic=168342.0 (https://www.gatewaytoairguns.org/GTA/index.php?topic=168342.0)
The Diana model 35 is a VERY nice rifle. It is a straightforward design with leather piston seal, O-ring breech seal, no safety. It’s a medium-sized rifle in the 700 FPS (.177) category, nice slender stock design, balances and handles very well. Really good air rifle that gives an R7 or HW 50 a run for its money.
The design has a lot in common with the smaller, and perhaps better-known, model 27. They share a lot of parts and the receiver tube is the same length, but the 35’s is larger in diameter for more power.
All post-war 35’s have the famous “ball-sear” adjustable trigger. On this design, you don’t adjust the pull weight per se, but the break point between the 1st and 2nd stage (in other words, when you have a short crisp 2nd stage...time to quit, LOL).
The 35 is one of Diana’s most successful designs, made from the early 1950’s to the early 1980’s, with a lot of variations in some details. They were once quite common and IMHO are quite underrated today. Diana’s quality control was always superb. The guns have beautiful bluing, nicely-finished stocks, beautifully-rifled barrels, one of the best adjustable-tension breech jaw designs ever made, and in the later versions a truly superb fully click-adjusting rear sight. The spring and piston seal are absolutely top quality and last a long time with reasonable maintenance.
Not a super powerful or flashy-looking airgun, but one of those sweet all-rounders that everyone should own.
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Any idea what it might be worth? It’s in mint condition.
IMHO these guns tend to be under-valued in the US. To me a nice 35 ought to be a $200+ gun, but real-world, supply and demand doesn’t seem to work out that way. I’ve never seen one of these later-production variants go for even $150 at an airgun show regardless of condition (the Diana 35 was made from about 1952 to 1983; early ones have some very interesting details and even came in target models, but the gun was simplified to a single sporter variant in the mid-60’s).
The model 35 was sold under many different markings (again, see the thread linked in my last post), but “Beeman Original” is one of the rarer ones. That might be of mild interest to some collectors, but again in my experience does not exactly create a stampede at a show, LOL...