doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Intersting Oddity or What Were They Thinking?

Looks a lot more like a California Valley or a Gambel's Quail to me. A gunmaker in Eugene, Oregon, more likely to know the California Valley Quail.

What's it worth? A few hundred dollars but not a thousand by any means. It is odd in its design and rare because they went out of business so quickly but not high quality or even that much of a clever design. If the bank had not called their note would they have built a thousand of this design? I doubt it. This was a dead end design from the start.

Wasn't there a financial panic about this same time? I bet the bank was fighting to remain solvent themselves. Or maybe the banker got gun number one and discharged it while trying to open it. Still I'd buy it if it was a reasonable reserve as a novelty. But as a rare or highly collectible gun it just lacks real value for big bucks. There were a hundred minor automobile makers who built a few cars and failed but you don't see them commanding big bucks. Sometime you fail for a reason.

Researcher you may be right as to the type of quail depicted. But at least it looks like a quail instead of a flying turnip masquerading as a duck.

It would have been very tough for me, were I alive in 1893 and looking to buy a fine arm, to decide between this gun and a Parker.
This, of course, assumes I were looking to use my purchase to propel a boat.

This gun seems to be a perfect example of how evolution seems to work. At one point, there's a change of environment that causes a whole lot of new mutations to come out. Then the more fit survive, and the ugly ducklings die out...