Not a bit surprised. A very rare gun for collectors of American shotguns. If I wasn't getting so old, I might have wanted it myself. I doubt the buyer will be asking for shooting information.
Walt: There's a real nice Nichols & Lefever E-grade 10-bore pictured in my new
Parker Guns: Shooting Flying book, and it's a shooter owned by Bob Boussum, one of the "Yooper" guys who put on the double gun shoot each June in Michigan's UP.
If you refer to the Roy Eckrose Online Auction Survey (2004), there were zero Nichols & Lefevers sold that year (and zero Dangerfield & Lefevers, and zero L. Barber & Co. Lefevers). These guns are rare in any condition. Uncle Dan always considered himself a large-scale gunsmith rather than a commercial maker (per a 1900 interview); to compare, Parker Brothers was always an industrial maker of commercial quantities (3000 to 7500 guns per year), averaging about 4,000 guns from the mid-1870s till the Great Depression. I don't know how many guns Uncle Dan made in his 3-year partnership with John A. Nichols, but it couldn't be many. The Boussum E-grade is the only one I have ever seen in person, and it is nice. EDM
