So, all these excite me, and many are partly because of the rifles they fit:
.275 Rigby
.256 Newton
.358 Winchester
.35 Whelen Ackley Improved
.270 Winchester Short Magnum
.338-06
6 mm Remington (which for some strange reason, even though I don't yet own one, I find far more exciting than the .244 Remington, which defies my hypotheses above. Though the .244 Remington is clearly at least one thousandth more exciting than the .243 Winchester)
.22 Hornet
.257 Roberts
9.3 x 62 Mauser (it gets even more exciting if you use a comma instead of a dot! Try it out...9,3 x 62 Mauser...see? That's how Lapua headstamps mine, and it does, really, excite me.)
9.5 x 57 Mauser (yes, "nine point five", not "nine point three" - even rarer!)
You are right ..... Those old cartridges are only exciting on old exciting rifles. The sum of excitement in the combination of cartridge and rifle is more than the separate amounts of excitement derived from the cartridge and rifle separately. Like who wants a nice FN-98 custom in 6CM? That rifle needs to be a 275Rigby or 9.3x57 to be truly exciting.
It's actually pretty exciting when you think about it..
