I think there are some misconceptions here, re the importance of "originality" for the American vs British collector.

In the first place, it's far more likely that something like a Purdey got shot a whole lot more than a top of the line Parker, Elsie, you name it. Think driven shooting. And the Brits, especially with their "best" guns, generally took a different approach to gun care that we did on this side of the pond. After a shooting season, the Purdey likely went back to Purdey. If the bores needed a bit of honing or polishing, or the barrels reblacking, they got it. If the wood needed refinishing, it was done. Sort of like taking your car to the dealer for regular maintenance and checkups. American guns, on the other hand, tended to visit the village smith only when something broke. The result is that while the Brits certainly value guns in high condition, there is less of a deduction for guns that are "other than original", because the fact is, most of them are "other than original". But if they're still in original proof and if things like reblacking the barrels and refinishing the wood were well-done--and they typically would have been, especially on "best" guns--such a gun would suffer far less in the eyes of a British collector than a reblued and re-CC Parker or Smith in the eyes of an American collector. And even if a British gun had the chambers lengthened to 2 3/4" from the original 2 1/2", that's not a big deal either--as long as it has the proper proofmarks and passed reproof.

Ted, as for a Fox sitting around somewhere in England for 100 years . . . I don't recall that article, but if it was written very long ago, there'd be a chronology problem--since Foxes didn't appear until 1905.

The proof load thing . . . That got a lot of good publicity for John Olin and his Model 21, but basically all it demonstrated was how much that gun was overbuilt. You're not going to hunt ducks for several seasons shooting blue pills. If a gun can digest several dozen proof loads before it fails, does that somehow make it inferior to one that can digest several hundred? If the one that can digest several dozen weighs, say, a pound or so less than the one that can digest several hundred, then I'm still likely to favor the one that's not as strong, because of the weight and because it's certainly strong enough for anything I want to do with it. And in spite of the legendary strength of the Model 21, it's interesting to note that Winchester kept a stock of Model 21 hinge pins, in gradually larger sizes, that you could slip in when the gun got loose on the original one.

Last edited by L. Brown; 02/07/09 10:06 AM.