I'm not entirely sure I agree: there are new Spanish guns available off the shelf in London and the sale of stock guns was linked to in the original post. Being pedantic, yes there's an order on the factory, but a speculative one from a dealer rather than firm from an end customer.
I suspect we’re coming at this from different directions.
I’m writing from the view point of the Spanish gun maker and his “end customer” is whoever pays for the gun. For him, there is nothing speculative about the sale, and the gun maker has no interest in what his customer does with the gun he has bought; shoot it, sell it, gift it, throw it in the ocean, it’s all the same to the maker .
I understand you are writing from the viewpoint of some re-seller, who will buy some number of shotguns, configured in whatever way he believes will allow the timely re-sale of the guns at a profit. That’s speculative indeed, and he must be concerned with whether the actual demand meets/exceeds his inventory.
As an aside, there are a couple of interesting related topics lurking here.
Firstly, I could make a good argument that any Spanish artisanal shotgun purchased by a retailer and offered for re-sale isn’t a new gun. At best it’s a second hand gun, offered NIB.
Secondly, buying an artisanal Spanish shotgun from a retailer, said gun being one from a lot of such guns made to the retailer’s specification, has a lot in common with buying a secondhand, NIB, custom made business suit that was made to someone else’s measure. It seems to me to obviate any advantage in buying a custom made shotgun.
There is enough controversy in either of those two discussions to keep this group jawing for years :-)
Sorry for the digression… back on topic.
The point I was driving at though was more one around interest in just how many guns are now made each year by small producers (we can't be talking big numbers but curious if anyone knows just how low production has now fallen).
Largely unknown and unknowable. The internal market for new, artisanal, shotguns in Spain is very close to zero. That market was killed by the new gun tax back circa 2008, and the consequences of that tax. The external market for Spanish artisanal shotguns has always been very small and is getting smaller for a number of reasons (e.g. world economic conditions, shrinking opportunity to own guns and/or hunt/shoot, tightening gun control actions, and especially the tightening export rules in Spain and the EU generally, to name only a few reasons).
Back in the days when the “big boys” (Victor Sarasqueta and the original AyA) were at their peak (say, roughly, 1965) their yearly production was in the tens of thousands of guns and some years topped one-hundred thousand guns. The current big gun makers (based on number of employees/shareholders) (e.g. AyA, Grulla, Arrieta, etc.) likely didn’t have orders totaling more than a few hundred side lock guns so far this year (box lock orders are a wild card). The smaller, one/two man, shops (a la Zubillaga) may not fill orders for more than a dozen guns in a year.
