Can anyone shed any light on this oddity. I’m a rank novice compared to many on here but I have never heard of a sears branded model 88 lever. The description even mentions that it’s based on the model 70 when it’s clearly an 88.
My recollection is that the Sears 53 was a bolt action made by Winchester. Either a 70 or 670 model.
I don't recall any Sears version of the Win 88. I suspect the rifle at auction is a Winchester 88 that has had a Sears 53 barrel installed on it. I can't see the barrel markings very well in the auction.
I think I'd have to agree with levers on that one. I've never seen a sears 88. I'm curious as to the serial number on the action. Stock, although bubba'd with the pad looks like a pre 64, the pics do make it look course than the press. User gun that had a bulged barrel that was fixed with what ever was found? Who knows. If reasonable enough on a sale though, be a damned good candidate for a 358 rebore. Especially a carbine version.
I believe the correct analysis here as fundamental confusion of two entirely dissimilar guns, bolt and lever. Dissimilar patterns of two dissimilar descriptions as mixing verbal and photo attributes of both. Less the product of grand scheme and more likely attributable to "bad meds" as results, "illogical"!
Below, but for this Forum file size limitations, would be of two differing Sears Model 53 barrel nomenclatures reflecting a Winchester Model 70A post '64 push feed rifles. Whether or what sub-model variations might have been reflected in differing minor such nomenclature variations, unknown to me.
I believe we all agree never a Sears Model 53 as reflecting a Winchester Model 88 pattern rifle. Winchester did also have its Model 53 of interwar twenties-thirties era. A successor to the Model 92. The Model 53 as "one configuration fits all". A Model 92 of many sub-variation replacement. A pix of such Model 53 below as notably only commonality with the Model 88 genre, both "levers".
A lot of time intensive, as unscrewing an "Alice down the rabbit hole" assertions of the referenced subject rifle. Unworthy of effort! The product as an advertisement for a rifle, so significantly flawed as misleading in description, beyond understanding "how such to occur". A pity in disservice to bidders, likely at least a majority deceived.
Yet to close on a positive element. The upside of what this seller is 'not'. Such, a Missile Control Officer who can't distinguish between "launch control button" and "toilet control lever"!
Rebarreled and restocked (badly). That's no factory stock. Note the lack of finger cutouts on either side of the mag well. The whole thing looks like dogshit. Even late pre 64 stocks have better executed checkering.
The stock looks just like my 1956 model 88 stock except no finger cutouts for box mag. Even the checkering is the same
It could also be a lunch pail gun, parts assembled by a Winchester employee after he/she sneaked them out of the factory. When I was growing up on the NH/VT border, lunch pail guns weren't uncommon at gun shops near the Connecticut River valley. They came out of firearms factories in CT and made their way north through MA and on into NH and VT, often spreading out from the railroads which were the best transportation systems prior to the construction of the Interstate highways.
