Condition Is Everything Part II

"Hey, how much is my gun worth?"

"Do you have it with you?"

"No..."

"*sigh*"

 Below are two Remington 51 .380ACP pistols, both of which could honestly be described by a non-collector over the phone to the poor gun store clerk as "Well, it's in pretty good shape..."

And they both are. They're both all there; the grip panels are intact and all the markings are clearly legible; their bores are both good and both function and still possess their original magazines...

The top pistol was probably made in 1919 (serial number in the mid 4-digit range) and is about a 95% gun. It has light wear on the high spots around the muzzle and a freckle or two here and there, and nosing around the web and looking at the Blue Book, I wouldn't be too embarrassed to hang a $600 price tag on it at a gun show to see if anyone bit.

The gun below it is also mechanically solid, all there, and functions fine. It's right on the borderline between a Variant I and a Variant II (it has the Remington logo on the frame and the .380 marking on the chamber, but it still has the old 9-serration slide) which dates it to 1921. While it's all there mechanically, the finish is worn to a dull gray patina in most places and there's evidence of previous pitting on the slide... Let's call it 40%, which puts book at $225.

You can see why one of my least favorite phone calls was the ol' "How much is my gun worth?" (There was always an awkward silence as I fought back the urge to say "Hold it up to the phone where I can see it better.")

They don't hardly make them like that anymore...

Over at the other blog, I posted a picture of my recently-acquired Remington 870 alongside a vintage Remington 10-A I've had for a couple of years.

Roughly a hundred years separate these two shoguns, although the 870 design, having debuted in 1950, is a classic in its own right.

The 10-A has a forend with a single action bar, and the bottom-ejecting action has a strange little side-hinged flipper that serves as a shell lifter. A Pedersen design, one tends to automatically assume this is an attempt to engineer around Browning patents held by Winchester on the Model 1897. The Model 10 was certainly more modern-looking than the exposed-hammer Winchester, while sharing with it a feature that has sadly vanished from most of our modern slide-action gauges:

To take down, flip out the latch at the muzzle end of the mag tube and give the tube a quarter turn and slide it and the forend toward the muzzle until they stop. Then give the entire barrel and mag tube assembly a quarter turn and pull it forward out of the receiver.

The above shotgun was bought for, like, a hundred bucks including tax back in the autumn of 2011; it's a little rough and the stock's in need of a bunch of Acraglass, if not complete replacement, and the barrel's been cut down to 18.5" from a full choke ~28" tube, so its collector value is just about nil, but it sure is neat. That takedown feature is just handier than a pocket on a shirt. Why don't they do that anymore?

Remington Model 11: A very belligerent fowling piece.

Unlike most European armies, the American armed forces have always had a place for the shotgun. Used on shipboard, guarding stockades, even seeing irregular use as a cavalry weapon during the Civil War, scatterguns have served with distinction. When the Doughboys went to the trenches of France in the Great War, they brought along the Winchester Model 1897 shotguns that were already serving, and soon pressed them into use as "trench brooms". The Germans filed a complaint in September of 1918 protesting the American use of fowling pieces, and alleging that they contravened the law of war (an odd stance for the inventors of chemical warfare.) The protest was dismissed by Secretary of State Robert Lansing in a formal diplomatic response.

ABOVE: Remington Model 11 riot shotgun, circa 1943. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Meanwhile, the need for shotguns had outstripped the supply of Model 1897's and Model 12's, as well as Remington Model 10's were also pressed into service.

In World War Two, the shotgun was again called to duty, with the Winchesters joined by Ithaca, Stevens, Savage, and the Remington Model 11. The latter shotgun, a John Moses Browning design, was notable for being the first self-loading shotgun.

RIGHT: Detail of Remington 11 receiver. Photo by Oleg Volk.

Browning had shopped the design to Winchester first, as he had all his previous longarm designs, but this time around they declined to pay royalties on the novel weapon and so he next shopped it to Winchester's arch-rival, Remington. Before Remington could enter negotiations their president died, and Browning instead took the gun to Fabrique Nationale, the company originally formed by the Belgian government and Ludwig Loewe to produce Mausers for the Belgian army. Browning had worked with them in the past, selling them several autopistol designs, one of which, a Model 1910, fired the shot that ignited World War One.

FN produced the shotgun as the Auto-Five, and production was licensed to Remington as the Model 11. It was a robust weapon, operating on the long-recoil principle, but was obviously designed as a sporting weapon rather than a military one, requiring tools for disassembly and reassembly. The one pictured above wears the "flaming bomb" U.S. Ordnance mark. Its serial number dates it to 1943, and it was probably used to guard a naval installation, or perhaps as a shipboard weapon.






LEFT: Detail of U.S. Ordnance markings on receiver. Photo by Oleg Volk.





U.S. military use of the scattergun continues to this day, with Remington, Mossberg, and Benelli shotguns being used in a variety of roles, from house-to-house fighting in the Middle East, to its traditional role as a weapon for facilities guards, to specialized short versions used as breaching weapons, for blowing locks and hinges off doors in close-quarters battle in urban settings.