doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Why are Remingtons second class citizens?

The reason that Remingtons have become second class citizens is solely based in supply vs demand, and the current prices reflect poorly the level of quality and workmanship your receiving. What do you suppose they would cost if Remington chose to resume production in the way they did with Parker?
Here's a better description that more af you will relate to...exactly 30 yrs ago, when I got double fever, it was tough to find a "roached out" LC Smith for $400 unless you didn't mind one with a cracked stock....back then, 6.5 Arisakas cost $40 all day long...NOW...I can still get a sound, but well used 12ga LC Smith for around $400, while those same Arisaka fence posts are now fetching $300...Yeah! from those guys that brought you Pearl Harbor!...
When a doublegun nut can still get a sound feild grade LC Smith for around $400, who is going to pay much past $350 for a field model 1894? This is the mechanics of a currenlty undervalued item

Reb,
I don't agree with researcher's statement about prolonging the death of other companies...it was the advent of the Ithaca Flues model that brought about the demise of the Remington SxSs...in fact Ithaca's rise to greatness didn't begin until a year or two before Remington ceased production of their SxSs...the end of the double shotgun era didn't come about for several decades and wars later.
Oh yeah, good point about the Remington acquiring Parker Gun Co...that speaks louder than words

My $0.02 FWIW.
It's the numbers made (and NOT made) and the advertising/promotion effort made in "those" days.
Remington was not a small company - they were a big company with cash flow from large military sales of rolling-block type rifles and bayonets. The SxS shotgun production could not have been much of their total cash flow and therefore (I speculate) rated small output for advertising and promotion.
Also, E. Remington & Son was bought by Marcellus Hartley and associates in 1888, reorganized and renamed Remington Arms Company (RAC). These were business men - not nitty-gritty gunmakers who were fixated on gun manufacture only, and they looked at their purchase of Remington (and other companies, IIRC) as a means of making profit. I recall they looked into typewriter manufacature and other industrial products (a possible Lyman Cornelius Smith harmonic here?).
The actual large SxS production of Models 1894 and 1900 from AD1900 - 1910 was itself a "shift of gears" as rolling-block military rifle sales had fallen off by then.
The (c.1909) RAC decision to cease SxS production was a "meat & potatoes' BUSINESS APPRECIATION decision to better use the industrial space available to them to make more profit making a different product - in this case the early semi-auto shotgun. This was a wise BUSINESS decision from the profit aspect. I believe at this point there had been a corporate decision made NOT to expand their "bricks & mortar' facilities as they did not see sufficient return on investment.
With the appreciation of greater profit potential supplying materiel to Great Britain during WW1, corporate RAC management finally realized they needed a bigger manufacturing plant, starting building a modern factory and completed it in 1916.
Marcellus Hartley (et al) were businessmen - and corporate RAC eventually realized that trying to make a good profit on an American made quality SxS shotgun was NOT GOOD BUSINESS - especially for a big company that had the option of shifting gears to other (profit generating) production. Hartley et al didn't arrive at their station in the business world by being stupid - they got there by being smart. And it was a smart corporate decision in 1910 to get out of SxS shotgun manufacture and make something with more potential. RAC realized they had to take the expensive "hand-craft" out of their shotguns to make money. And history shows us that they were right.
Other companies lacked the corporate foresight and/or the company finances to shift to other industrial products, and bled (red ink) to death.
That's my take on it, anyway.

Reb,

Remingtons purchase of Parker was two or three corporate entities later and was truely an economic mistake.

Dave

There's are a whole host of note worthy gunmakers that Remington out did durning the Gilded Age.
...but praying at the altar of Flues for flooding the market?

Remi 1894, 32 and 31 are not "second class citizens".

Are Marlin, Savage, High Standard, S7W, etc. second class citizens? I don't think limited collector interest is an indication of citizenship class. It is merely a facit of the brand's personality, and not a definition.

Jagermeister & Rocketman, you're emphasizing my point. In my circle of friends who are into double, they won't even look at a Remington, yet they'll look at a plane jane Fox Sterlingworth, Ithaca Flues or Greener. When you remove the fine engraving and take the guns back to simple finishes, I don't see how the Remington's take a back seat to anyone in the way of quality. I have a Westley Richards A&D boxlock and when comparing it to the Remington 1894, there isn't a tremendous amount of different. Sure the WR is a bit nicer, but it would probably sell in the 2-3K range, where as the Remington would fetch 1k at best.

I see the Remingtons as a real buy in todays double gun market. I would really like to add a nice Damascus 1894 to my collection and then re-stock it to dimensions more appropriate to memebers of the human race.

Lowell Glenthorne has flown in again with his alligator mouth...I'm off to bring the trouble to his threads instead...this pigeon refuses to let me be...stand by Lowell

KG - WR vs Purdey? A&N vs WR? Same situation. The maker's name has Brand Value. Essentially the same products are valued quite differently based solely on brand name.

"I see the Remingtons as a real buy in todays double gun market." A good value for the shooter, but not necessarily for the collector.

Condition for condition and grade for grade, I dont see Remingtons bringing less money than Fox,Lefever,Ithaca,LC Smith on todays market. The higher grade Parkers bring more than they should and it seems like high grade LC Smith and Lefever are starting to get unnaturally high too. You dont see that many high grade Remingtons for sale to compare.

The C grade Remington is valued close to:DH Parker, C grade Fox, grade 3 LC Smith, grade 4 Ithaca, Lefever E grade,DM Lefever 8E. These guns were all similar in price when new and remain so today. Parker probably commands higher prices due to Rocketman's thesis on name recognition.

Id say though that Remingtons do suffer from being built during the huge "drop in the stock" days with not many modern dimension guns available.
Ross