The shotgun writer for Field & Stream picked his 50 best shotguns- Yup the overpriced Limey Purdey was No. 1 (at just 6 figures, in case you won the Power Ball) and the Kraut Merkel was in the last sector. He mentioned receipt of a Merkel 12 O/U "for evaluation" and when he couldn't get the forearm on when assemblying the shotgun, called and spoke with a Merkel gunsmith that said "You have to hit it very very hard"- Humm-sounds like the old shop saying I heard years ago "Never use force, just get a bigger hammer from the tool crib". ________________________________________________________________OOne of the problems with this observation is that there are so many variables to the make-up of a "quality" shotgun; thus, the continuing viewpoint on this board that it is the gun not the name that needs to be assessed. I think that this view is often futile as it requires one to bet against the marketplace, which says that Purdeys, for instance, are the best guns and therefore are the most valuable. That said, however, there were at least a few years (decades?) when Purdey quality reached a fairly low ebb, especially mechanically. One could argue that the Engish best guns' current imitation of Italian guns also represents a fairly low ebb, either in creativity or aesthetics. In any event, in assessing Merkels and other German guns, the date of manufacture is absolutely critical. Clearly, for instance, guns from pre 1960ish are head and shoulders above those currently manufactured in Germany and German guns (Merkel, Greifelt, Sauer and the dozens of other quality Suhl manufacturers that disappeared in WW II) of pre-war manufacture are the equal of any other country's. They're rarer too. I know this is not reflected in the market and I don't expect that it ever will be.
