doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com "Entry Level" SxS's - Your Opinion

No doubt - I'm in full agreement. A Fox 12GA Sterly is still a bargain cux everyone wants sub guages. I know where at least 20 of them in solid shape are right now. Most of them do have too much drop no matter what the guage for me. So that bargain would quickly cost me some coin to re-stock. Still, they are so friggin bomb proof.600-900 bucks all day long.

EDM:

Interesting statistics! Where are you located on the Wis-Ill line? I'm on the Wis side of the line, a couple of rifle shots away from the border.

Roy

Can't get any closer to the IL/WI stateline than my place. I own part of the state line almost due south of Madison and Broadhead, and straight north of Durand IL--Where the deer and the antelope play! I see where the WI pheasant season opened last Saturday; Any birds around your neck of the woods?

By the way, my "statistics" are just arithmetic crunches of your raw data, with no spin on condition or originality, or even seperating hammer guns from hammerless. Parkers exceeded the Foxes on the average, but a Fox sold for more than the highest Parker. In the final analysis, every gun stands on its own merits. I thought the $850 "entry level" Trojan 12-bore I bought for my son was a good deal; he'll enjoy owning and shooting the gun and will more than likely sell it for more someday. I noticed others on this thread talking up $200 guns while using $1,000 worth of computer and $50 per month Internet service. I guess it's all a matter of priorities. EDM

In my opinion your best value is a SXS 12 G; boxlock none ejector, by a reputable Birmingham or English provincial maker.These guns are selling for between $ 200- $1000 at auction in the U.K. [eg; Holts].Cost to ship to the U.S.A.including duty may add upto $500 to your landed cost. The B.L.N.E. are perhaps the most under valued guns/antiques available.

How do you impute "value" to an entry level shooting man's gun bought "blind-man's-bluff" from thousands of miles away, without ever having put the gun to your shoulder? You could buy a servicable American box lock sans ejectors for less than shipping and handling from across the big pond.

And I am ammused by the caveat pretaining to "reputable" Birmingham and/or English provincial makers; please tell us who are the disreputable ones to avoid; and where does the finacially challanged neophyte nimrod get parts and repairs for his one-off entry level import? That $850 Trojan I bought my son keeps looking better and better, all things considered.

By the way, I didn't just fall off te hay wagon and invent this stuff. I just finished 122,000 words of case-on-point documented analysis in my new book, Parker Guns: Shooting Flying and the American Experience (Collector Books of Paducah KY, scheduled for release summer 2008). Chapter 17 ("Apple Pie vrs. Spotted Dick") and Ch.18 (Americans Search for Their Own Identity") cover the evolution of American made shotguns, from the American gunsmith/makers importing locks and barrels pre-Civil War, assembling them and stamping their own names; to Charles Parker's industrial operation making America's first breechloader SxS ca.1866, and fighting the winning battle with imported guns; to the machine-made interchangable guns of the late 1870s, going head to head with the leading Birmingham and provincial imports; to sales of the "reputable" imported guns suffering badly in the 1880s and thereafter, as the American makers-L.C.Smith, Lefever, Parker, Baker, Ithaca, and others reigned supreme. Aside from "reputable" in connection with British imports, another word comes to mind: Anglophile.

First, any anglophile worth his predisposition, knows that spotted dick is a popular English dessert. The anglo-malady, however, harks back to the earliest times of fowling pieces, when Aimwell (an English gunmaker), in a discourse with his student Friendly about imported guns said, "...the foreigners have found out our foible in that, as in most of their rarities; that is, if they are but far fetched and dear bought, they are sure to please." From The Art of Shooting Flying (1767) by Thomas Page.

After being at Pintail Point MD for several days, trolling the fine guns at the Game Fair part of the Vintage Cup, it's hard to seperate the fine imports from the fine American-made guns, grade for grade, prices all being out of sight. Some prefer imports, others like home grown, with no discernable quantitative differences (meaning scores) when it comes to suitability for purpose. Andy Duffy won the first Vintage Cup in 1997 with his father's Parker GH and probably would have won it with a Purdey or N.H.Davis or Baker or Greener, so long as they were choked right and fit. Now I have gone full circle: How do you buy a suitable/shootable gun at auction in overseas without ever putting it to your shoulder? EDM

I choose to ignore your sarcastic comment,frankly they are not welcome on this forum. Instead I will provide Sidelock with information on how, if he wishes, he can take steps to purchase an entry level gun from the U.K.
Contact: Diggory Hadoke :www.vintageguns.co.u.k and provide the following:
Bubget constraints.
Calibre/Gauge required
Barrel material and length,chamber length,degree[s] of choke, prefered,minimum acceptable wall thickness.[.020 Suggested]
Nitro proof level required.
Stock dimensions, including cast, and style prefered.
Prefered Engraving style .
Degree of origional finish expected [Done up guns not recommend]
Prefered makers.
Cased or not cased.
On page 25 of the Double Gun Journal, Vol, 16 Issue 4, Winter 2006,Diggory is pictured with two very sound B.L.N.E.for Which he paid $260 for the pair!
I am a frequent visitor to the U.K.and can recommend the following gun makers based on personal experience. A.A. Brown. William Powell,& Elderkin.