doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com To shoot or not to shoot (high condition)

Answer:

1) Yes, that's what they were made for.

2) No.

I remember, when I first started shooting trap, I bought a new Beretta trap gun. After a few weeks of shooting with it, I was going through the door of my club house carrying my gun in one hand and shells in the other. The wind blew the door closed and before I could get out of the way, the door hit my gun and put a small ding near the end of the buttstock of my new gun. I was ticked off...... This summer, I bought a used Citori when I started shooting skeet. Some of you might remember. It was used, but there wasn't a mark on it because the guy who owned it before me, bought it, shot it a few times and then turned around and traded it back to the dealer. So, I couldn't really tell if it had been shot. It was still that new. A guy at my range wanted to shoot it because he didn't have his skeet gun that day. He had let my use his skeet gun a few weeks before when I was just starting at shooting skeet. So, fair was fair, right? We were both shooting the same gun on the same round- handing it back and forth and while he was turning around talking to everyone and not watching what he was doing, he dropped a shell while he was loading the gun. He made a few stabs at it and the shell flipped up in the air a few times and in order to catch it, he clamped it between his bicep and the buttstock and the rim from the brass on the shell made a nice ding right in the middle of the stock. The first day I had it!! I was ticked off. Neither of these were expensive guns, mind you. But, things like that happen. Better with a thumper than a nice classic.

personal decision.....period.

I have nice guns that I do not hunt quail with...especiall around badger holes(I fell in one once that was so big I was trying to learn chinese before I touched bottom). But, I will definatly hunt dove with them on a clear nice opening day.

I have a friend that will not even hunt with a very plain Citori, I have seen prettier wood on a pallet!

There are things you can do.

1. Do not have zippers on your vest.

2. Do not handle other things while you are handling your gun, within reason.

3. Never lean it against a vehicle.

4. Be mindfull of doors and hatches on back of 4x4s.

5. Always keep a Rem wipe or something like it handy to prevent surcace rust.

I am sure that there are many other hints like that but these guns are for our enjoyment only the individual that owns it can best decide how that is done.

Some folks marry a lady in white and leave no Heirs while others have dozens of grandkids.I would shoot the gun just like the first owner. As for rain who knows when it might happen.Think back to the Vintagers shoot and all the fine guns on display.No matter how fine the tent these guns were in the weather.

Some Parkers, Tim, are indeed "Safe Queens" and ascribing the female gender to an item most commonly owned and used (or collected) by males may seem strange, as the tradition of referring to ships and sailing vessels as "She". But, in the case of Parker Bros., the top stock checkerer for many years was a lady named Mrs. Hanson (Hansen) I loaned my Peter Johnson Parker book to a friend, that's where I recall reading this fact. And ladies have also influenced shooting and our beloved Parkers, albiet in a segue: William Hardon Foster shot Parkers, and he was the 'inventor' of skeet-originally called 'shooting around the clock' I believe. In the early 1920's, I think it was Remington, sponsored a contest to name this new clays shopgun event, and a Mrs. Gertrude Hurlburt (Hurlbert)? from MN won- the used the Scandanavian word for 'shoot", that word being skeet.

I sold a "national treasure" about two years ago. It was--and I hope still is--NIB with box with label, hang tags, and barrels still wrapped in cardboard packing, just as it left the factory in 1927. Don Criswell, a top-end gun dealer who specialized in collecting unfired Parkers, once told me he had never seen a NIB Trojan, and he said my gun was one of a kind.

High condition and unfired "knockabouts" tend to be rare because they were knocked about and weren't valued like the higher grades when new. I sold this $27.50 when-new gun for $7,500.00, a record price for a Trojan 12-bore. The new owner bought it strictly as an investment, and flipped it on Jim Julia's auction last October for $9,000 plus 15% juice, or $10,350.00...FOR A TROJAN!

Meanwhile, I thought last fall that I might be be wise to invest in Crocks Rubber shoes (CROX on the ticker) because the pundits on Wall Street thought it was under priced at about $75.00 per share, and my grand kids wouldn't wear anything else. But I don't play the markets...and now a year later CROX is hovering around $3.00. And the Dow has tanked from 14,000+ to in the 8,000s. Parker guns are looking pretty good right now as a store of wealth. I personally do not consider fine shotguns as "investment grade," but they do tend to hold their value if well thought, well bought, and well cared for. This includes separating the wheat from the chaff: The shooters from the collector's items. A NIB or unfired pre-WWII shotgun is a collector's item.

After selling the Trojan 12-bore for $7.500.00 as a collector's item I effectively bought it back as a shooter for $850.00 at the Vintage Cup last year. A dealer had a similar Trojan 28-inch M&F with original butt plate, original varnish, and hardly ever shot...but it had been a "closet gun" that got rusty. The barrels were refinished too black for an original Parker, and the action had some pitting on the bolsters; the case colors were removed when the rust was cleaned up, but inside it was close to new, hardly ever fired.

My son now has an almost unfired 1920s Trojan that suits him as much as a shooter as if I had given him the NIB Trojan to trap and bird shoot. There is no moral to this story. When I owned the NIB Trojan it was mine to toss the box and packaging if I wanted, and I could have used and even abused it...but to what end? I owned it and passed it on, got a good price, and have a story to tell. If the story were that I tossed the box and reduced the 100% case colors to, say, 50% through hard use, I think the consensus here would be that I was not too smart. But selling a $7,500 Trojan and buying one back for %850 and not investing the "profits" in CROX...

Well, those who think firing a NIB or unfired collector gun is a good idea should tell their success stories rather than pile opinion ("I would do it") upon conjecture ("if I had such a gun") upon platitude ("guns are made to be used"). Let us not forget that the opinions posted on this Forum are mostly worth what we pay for access. And a caveat: When expressing my opinions above, I mean NIB and unfired guns in 98%+ condition. I have always recommended buying shooters in high-original and close-to-new condition (say, 50% to 90% case colors), when possible. Guns advertised as "New by DelGrego" or "New by Turnbull" are, for the most part, no more new than a beat-out high-mileage car that has been to MAACO for a paint job. Other people think otherwise, and it's their money. EDM

Here's a man who should read my books and articles.

I interviewed Peter Johnson in 2004; he passed away in 2005. (See my Winter 2005 DGJ article.) Mrs. Hanson has no provenance as "Parker's top stock checkerer." She was simply a surviving Parker employee who answered an ad in her local newspaper. What happened was that in 1958, Peter, then a young English teacher at the University of Virginia, decided to start writing a book about the Parker shotgun. He placed an ad in the Meriden CT newspaper, soliciting letter post communications from anyone who had Parker-related information. Mrs. Hanson sent him a letter telling her story of being hired for nothing-per-hour till she learned her trade, and then 50 cents per day; at the time, "contractors," who would have been skilled team leaders, were making 25 cents to 35 cents per hour, and she would have worked for one of the more skilled checkers. (They called the process "Checking," nor "Checkering.")

As to another story well-told, it is true that Mrs. Gertrude Hurlbutt of Dayton, Montana, won a contest to name Wm. Fosters new shotgun game. Foster was the editor of the National Sportsman magazine, which ran the contest. The contest form was the two facing pages at the center of a 1926 issue that I once had in my collection. Turning the page, the the big bold title of the next article was something like, "Skeeters in Missouri," referring to mosquitoes. A little imagination coupled with seeing a picture of old Gerttie and the true story becomes clear.

She was a perfect clone of Granny on the "Beaverly Hillbilies." She lived in the middle of Nowhere, Montana, in the 1920s. No doubt her husband subscribed to Foster's "National Sportsman." Reading materials served a dual purpose in the days of outdoor plumbing. If ol' Gerttie started at the middle of a magazine, she could get two sheets off the staples without tearing. But in a seminal moment, while poised and ready to wipe, she saw a chance to make $100. So she saved the contest form and pulled off of the staples the next two shests...and Viola!

There it was: "Skeeters in Missouri," and the rest is over-embellished quasi-history.

As to the word "skeet" being an old Scandinavian word for shooting, this was debunked in the magazines of the day. Once Gerttie's story was told there was a barrage of letters to the editor from sportsmen of the various Scandinavian countries disclaiming the word derivation. See p.73 of my Parker Guns; The "Old Reliable" (Safari Press 1997, 2004).

EDM

Mark, I wish I had more "wastes" like her!!! It is just beautiful. And when I need to go shooting, I don't feel the need to take one that has not been shot. I'm not that selfish. Or that foolish.

Tim

It's all a matter of perspective. If you're a hunter/shooter, than how well the gun works for you is of most import. If your a collector, than it is all about condition. Collecting is about one of two things, scholarship or ego. If your an investor, than the profit is in the buy and there is little real affection for the items. It seems in some respect that all answers are correct.

To return to the original question, no and no. From a practical standpoint, I see no reason to shoot the value off of the gun. I no longer believe that a pristine specimen adds to scholarship as any 80% gun will tell us anything we need to know about original finishes, engraving styles, etc.

The answer is simple: do you buy it to shoot or to look at? You decide. No one can do your thinking for you.

I buy guns to shoot. Some start off as pure as driven snow, immaculate conceptions made to shoot in all weather, and that's what I do.