doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com The best of the Best - an English perspective....

Recently Purdey had a "slow pitch" article in SSM announcing their new .410 was to be made finally on a proportioned, dedicated .410 frame because still using a 28-ga frame "just wouldn't do." (At $80,000 one would think....) This ad/article was in the context of having belatedly invented the wheel about 80 years after Parker Bros introduced their .410 with a dedicated 000-size frame in 1925 or '26.

While a .410--be it a Parker or Purdey--hardly has anything to do with shooting sports, and I doubt whether any of the new $49,000 Remington/Galazan/Parker AAHE 28-gauges will see much service in the field, some people like smallbores, maybe as a declaration of their shooting prowess or wealth or just because they like it and money is not scarce in their life. They probably favor bamboo 3-weight fly rods with thin leaders and spider-web tippets. But going back to the post about the "best" of the Britain that used to be Great, the guns on The Field's list are nothing I would select for the purpose intended, unless the intention was to brag that I paid too much for something "Best" kept locked up in the gun vault.

As to "...teaching the boys at the PGCA a lesson in greed," the gun was bought by a dealer on a single bid with no underbidder, which may be a lesson of sorts. Meanwhile the better example of a gun best suited for purpose is the $850 Trojan I bought for my son at the Vintagers. It's close to new on the inside because it was a closet gun, and because it got stuck in the closet, forgotten for decades, it got rusty on the action and barrels. The barrels were refinished, and the action has a few pits and no colors because of the rust removal; but the wood is all original and in collector condition. In this context, the Chavinistic British opinions of self-agrandizing worth are as irrelevant today as they were back in the nineteenth century, when thousands of good ol' boys were buying Parkers, L.C.Smiths. Ithacas, and Lefevers for every one Lord-of-the-Manor wannabe who coughed up twice the money for a grade-comparable import.

Now that we know the identity of the best British shotguns per their leading magazine's zenophobic blinders-on opinion in re: their advertisers, I predict the number of American sportsmen taking the bait will be countable without removing footwear. EDM

I looked for your new book. It must not be released from Collector Books yet?

EDM...
I hope the dealer doesn't go in the hole on the re-sale of the Czar's Parker - I'm sure the therapy bills are mounting!

My new book, Parker Guns: Shooting Flying and the American Experience (Collector Books, Paducah KY) is work in process now, starting with the cover set-up. The M/S and picture portfolio with captions is complete, but It usually takes a year or more to go from contract to release; I signed the contract in late August, and it's scheduled for Xmas 2008, which means it must be available to dealers and distributors by Labor Day. So far the M/S has been peer reviewed by Kevin McCormack, Bruce Day, Dave "Researcher" Noreen, Vic Venters, Charlie Price, and Austin Hogan, and a M/s copy is in te hands of Mike Carrick. No serious complaints.

I notice on another thread that someone was asking about the new L.C.Smith book at $125. In today's publishing climate where we gun cranks are all watching 24-hour cable news while dwelling for hours on this website when not checking our e-mail or Blackberry or Instant Messaging or blogging...well, who has time to read a book? And thus the author of the new Smith book fronted so many $$$ for professional photography and to his subsidy publisher that he will be lucky to get back his out of pocket if all the print run sells out at $125 retail. So buy early and often.

Per contra, I ducked the self publishing bullet when I found a conventional publishing house interested in doing my book.

More important is distribution and economies of scale. Without naming the book or author, another self-publish effort at Schiffler with a 4,000 book print run worked out like this: Authors purchased 2,000 of their own book at $28 per copy (that's $56,000 for Florida voters), and Schiffler kept 2,000 to sell through ordinary book stores and dealers. Books sold by publishers in quantities of 2,000 will usually be discounted 60% or more. Distributor purchase price of 40% of the $70 cover price = $28 so the authors, who have to retail their own book to make out, could have bought any book for $28 in the 2,000 lot size and didn't have to go to all the trouble of taking photos and writing text. In other words, this gun book writing gig is strictly a labor of love.

Anyone interested in what I have to sell (books, reprint catalogs, poster) can e-mail me their address for a snail-mail flyer. Although I have been fortunate to strike responsive chords with publishers who actually pay me $$$ up front, the amounts are about what I would make behind the counter at McDonalds, and I don't get any free french fries. EDM

Jack ("Pug") told me that he has higher offers, but he's holding on to it for a while. The motivation and resulting fallout was mention in the mass media that he could not have bought for the same money: Forbes, Wall Street Journal, and all the sporting press.

The price of $287,500 @ 8% on his operating line for a year is $23,000 and that's deductable, so if he flips the gun for what he paid he got a real bargain in calling attention to his gun dealership. And for the time being guns and other collectibles seem to be doing better than Enron or sub-prime mortgages; at least if the gun market tanks he can fondle and shoot it and wait for things to get better. Pug did what the rest of us are doing, but with one or two more zeros. EDM

What about a Westley Richards drop-lock gun? I think that should be on the list.