Gitano - welcome to this board. A good question for openers.
One thing I have discovered in a good many years of Brit gun trade research is that quality can't be tied to brand names. Quality is much more closely associated with the original retail price. Shops were run by masters of the trade. All masters knew well how to get out a best work gun. "Best work" implies that all work on the gun was as good as can be done. Keeping in mind that shops neeeded to return a profit to stay in business, each master knew what work to do in-house, what to send out, and who to send it to. Finding best work craftsmen, materials, and design was much less an issue than was attracting best work commissions for bespoke. Note that the term "best" is only loosely defined and is more often misapplied than applied correctly. Nobody anywhere at any time delivered bargain basement best work guns.
You will do yourself a world of good if you will divide gun values into three factors: brand name value level, original quality grade, and current condition level. This system recognizes that the market has ascribed differing values to guns of the same original quality grade and current condition level. Similar original quality grade guns sold for pretty much the same amount of money at original sale. That is to say anybody's best work gun sold for about 20X the price of a colonial/farmer grade of gun. Current condition also ranges about 20X from a pristine gun (the best condition gun of 50 similar guns) to wall hanger condition. Brand value rns about 8X from a no-name continental gun to a top brand (Boss, H&H, Purdey, or J. Woodward) value Brit gun.
So, if a McCririck gun is found to be of high quality, that will be because the custome ordered a high quality gun, not because McCririck had better designs, materials, or craftsmanship than did others. Sorry, no magic, mostly straight forward economics.
