doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Parker Records

Greg, I agree with you. I find the Dons etc that have inside dope on Parkers distastefull, to say the least. If there are other records out there, and people want to reference them, then, where are they ?

Daryl: You slander a whole bunch of good people who devoted much time and their own money to create one fine Research Letter system.

Going back to about 1991, there were just a bunch of old business records in the furnace room at Remington. Most anybody who worked there had access, and sometimes their friends. But unless one was interested in Parkers at the collector level, they were just stacks of of heavy, hard-to-decipher old business records that would take a crew of 6 at least a week to sort through. And there was a time element...

Larry Baer tried to access the records in the early 1970s and was denied. At the time photocopy machines sufficient to reproduce the records were extremely expensive, and were owned only by big businesses; going back to the late 1950s, all Peter Johnson's research was by letter-post mail, no phone calls, and his M/S was hand-written and typed with carbons by a public steno. There were no Xerox machines then.

It really wasn't till the 1980s that technology and Parker-centric manpower started to catch up with the magnitude of the work involved to mine the records. Thus there was understandable reluctance on the part of the Remington decision makers to allow just any outsider(s) in to berry pick or do uninformed casual research. The Parker Story people established their credentials and capability to publish, and were given access. There was so much there that they had to prioritize by selecting only the serialized Stock Books and mostly omit the Order Books in their copying. These books are oversize and it took special equipment. As I recall there were over 30,000 folio-size copies.

Now I don't know this for a fact, but I am given to understand that some non-decision-making Remington employees saw the Parker records as their own private turf and perk, and lobbied against outside access, but were overruled. I am also given to understand that there are a sufficient number of present Remington employees and alums who are PGCA life/voting members (some officers), and that if they vote in concert...well, draw your own conclusions. But whatever the case, the original factory records continue to reside at Ilion, and the PGCA photocopies of Stock and Order books are effectively under control of Remington people. And why not?

Exactly what is "distasteful" about Remington having its own records, or Remington people and others being the custodians of the PGCA photocopies. The idea that there is some conspiracy of "dons that have inside dope" is just plain silly. Why wouldn't Remington employees have access to the company's business records? Why wouldn't Bill 8-Bore have special knowledge? After all, he helped copy the records for the PGCA, along with a whole crew from as far away as Missouri and Virginia and North Carolina, who camped out for a week in Ilion with their own copying machines! Same for the Parker Story people who got access in the first place.

So, YES, there are people with "special knowledge." How could they avoid it? They are the people who did the grunt labor, hefted the books, pushed the "copy" button, checked the copies to be clear and complete, all 60,000 folio-size pages or more, and then sorted through the information so it could be computerized and useful in answering requests by collectors for information on a particular gun.

As I said in my last post, Babe allowed me some copies of the 1873 Order Book in his possession. But it is of zero value in authenticating any specific guns because there are no serial numbers. It is just a souvenir, a bit of memorabilia that really doesn't add to the verification of particular guns. The idea that information is being withheld because of all the "upgrades" that would be unmasked as frauds is just plain silly. Most all of the upgrades were proudly proclaimed by the up-graders as works of art, and poor quality work is blatant. I have seen upgrades and they stick out like sore thumbs. The presumption that there are upgrades out there as yet undiscovered as such is purely specious.

The only "upgrade" litigation that I ever heard of involved Tony G's "upgrading" an A-1-S to conform with Peter Johnson's surmise of what the Czar's gun would look like. The buyer claimed that he thought it was the real Czar's gun; Tony said it was just his interpretation (sort of a "work of art"), and the judge sided with Tony. This was maybe 30 years ago and gave rise to the "upgrade" paranoia that continues to this day among those who really don't know enough about Parker guns to validate originality based upon appearance and configuration.

Given the methodology of those who gathered and mined the Parker records, and the cross-check between the Stock and Order books, I understand that there are less than 10% of guns that can't be traced to the records. Further, most high-grade guns have ownership provenance by virtue of being family heirlooms. You can't upgrade a common twelve-bore into a scarce and valuable four-ten. What we are talking about here is the re-manufacturing of metal and wood. Anyone who knows much about Parkers today can spot an upgrade.

Anyone today looking at Tony's upgraded "Czar's Gun" sees it as "circus art." Maybe back long ago before the PGCA, the DGJ, SSM, the Internet Forums, a half-dozen books, and the Game Fair events like the Vintage Cup and Sanford, and the well-illustrated auction catalogs, there was a dearth of info, and people were perhaps worried about upgrades not identified as such. That was then and this is now. There is just too much information and too many informed people to perpetuate the myth among the real players; I wonder how many posters on this thread who take umbrage actually collect Parkers of grade high-enough to warrant counterfeiting? EDM

GregSY; What do you not get about the fact that the original Parker records reside with the Remington Arms Company that owns them in Ilion NY. The PGCA is the ONLY and FINAL authority because it has Stock Book photocopies procured by Roy Gunther, Charlie Price, Louis Parker, Bill Mullins for the Parker Story in 1992; also in June 1998, Ron Kirby arranged for a research mission to Ilion by himself, Kevin McCormack, Bill Murphy, Jim Hall, Mark Conrad, Allan Swanson, Dave Rozier, Pall Burns, and Frank Sweeney. These guys came from all over the country and as far away as Texas, and devoted a full week at their own expense to get 32,000 pages of Order Books and 5,000 IBM cards, and that was just the start...next came transferring the millions of bits of data to a computer in such a way that it could be cross-referenced and retreived...

GregSY: Why don't you explain why:

The stewardship by the PGCA of its own photocopied factory records, so as to produce Research Letters, not otherwise obtainable, "...leaves a lot to be desired."

And pray tell us why you "find distasteful" that someone who procured the photocopies for the PGCA had "greater access" and knows something about the information he copied.

And do you really "question the integrity" of the above named doctor, lawyers, businessmen, teacher, government officials, and other individuals? Well, yea, you are Mr. Question Man, never an answer, always the jab, just questioning everything because you don't have a clue.

The distasteful part comes from the gloating, Ed.

No one, except you, said anything about Remington employees re: access to records. Though I will note that typically company records are considered property of the company and not its individual employees. Just cuz you get a job at Coke sweeping floors doesn't mean you can borrow the secret formula.

My understanding, which may be wrong, is that Remington allowed select people access to the records (e.g. copying them) not as individuals but as members of the PGCA. And I would believe they did it to benefit the greater good of the Parker collecting world, not to help line the knowledge base of a few select individuals. Am I wrong?

How can people with select knowledge avoid having it? Easy. Publish all that they have. If they wish to charge a fee for the fact that they hefted smelly books so be it. Personally, I would be glad to heft smelly books at no charge, but hey that's just me.

It's kinda like the volunteer at the State Fair pocketing $5 out of every $100. After all, how could he avoid it?

I'll say it again - I don't have any problem with the PGCA or their research letter program - it's a good thing. But shouldn't all members of the PGCA have equal access to information that is considered part of the PGCA base?

Ed, I was typing my reply as you entered yours. But it looks like the Answer Man gave you what you are looking for. Were the fellows you mentioned allowed access because they were nice guys or because they presented themselves under the auspices of the PGCA? Makes a big diff.

As for questioning the integrity of a lawyer....come on now you gotta make it harder than that.

Greg, I have no such preferred access to Parker records as you suggest. I pay my money and I read my letter. I know more about the process and the history of the record search than some only because I was a member of the original 1998 PGCA Research Team. I have no preferred access to the research file I helped to create. I have to send in checks just like everyone else. I find your last paragraph in the Jan 25 12:59 PM post to be distasteful and I will delete this paragraph if you will delete your paragraph. In fact, I have found several of your statements since that post to be incorrect and offensive also. I invite you to examine my research file which I obtained over fifty years of studying Parker shotguns, a file that I created at great expense and expenditure of time. The 1998 research team, with the exception of yours truly, has forgotten most of what they copied. You may claim that you also would have been willing to do it, but you have no idea how hard we worked at Ilion while our jobs at home went undone. The TPS researchers and the PGCA researchers did more for Parker collectors than anyone before or since. I have not published my personally obtained research information because I don't know how, but I have shared it without compensation whenever anyone has asked. If you consider what I am doing "gloating", you are sadly mistaken.

I agree as to most upgrades not being able to fool an experienced Parker man,but many people are and were aware of Parkers as desirable and were and are not experts,just have enough knowledge to be dangerous and plenty of money to buy for their portfolio.Upgrade can mean anything that would enhance value,some of them relatively simple to do such as "Skeet" stampings on the barrel flats or presentation inscriptions.How many people that like Parkers can rattle off the proper serial number range for skeet guns?I think after 30-50 years of gentle use that a refinished/upgraded gun would be hard to detect from an original.
I think a good example of hard to detect upgrades are many of the lever action Winchesters.How many spurious "special feature" Winchesters started out as a clean,hard used gun that received the benefit of some expert metal work? Easy to spot if you have access to Cody letter
at the time the gun is offered for sale.Lots of upgrades are in collections that were accumulated by people not really gun people,but more interested in having something rare. The R.L.Wilson case of a few years ago is a good example.Money alone cannot buy you expertise,something the con men count on.

I might mention that the widely advertised and talked about "Parkers at the end of the Rainbow" shows at least one gun that was known to have been restocked at one time.Does it have the original stock now?So many unanswered questions,so much money at stake,so many reputations on the line.

I've tried to be a gentleman in every post I've made here and elsewhere and with this in mind I'll just say GregSY, envy makes your butt look big.

Dean

Maybe it's me but I've never seen gloating on either this or Parker board.