Another piece of history ruined. How sad. Seems to me like I remember seeing a chrome-plated Francotte somewhere this past week.... maybe the folks who did this to these two shotguns are related.
redoftx
That was over at 16ga Society. They concluded that somewhere, a pimp was missing his sxs. That, or it was a cruise-ship trapshooting gun, plated to protect against corrosion.
I can see as "reasonable" that some of the older sxs might be nickel-plated. In the late 1800s, nickel was a new wonder metal and plating something with it would not have seemed out of the ordinary because of its corrosion-resistance properties. New, wonder materials get used for stuff we a couple decades later are repelled by: Everett Garrison, one of the masters of bamboo fly rod-making, used plastic reel seat inserts in some of his rods in the 30s and 40s. Plastic was the new wonder material at that time, the ultimate of high-tech, etc.
