We all have shotguns, already. We probably have so many shotguns, that we'd have to pause to remember how many we own.
The five thousand dollars a nice Model 21 with ejectors, beaver tail forend, and a single trigger costs, buys a very nice American made shotgun, but after you'd take it home and the new wore off the thing, it wouldn't shoot or be any better shotgun than a Model 12 Winchester that can be bought for five hundred dollars.
The nicest AyA Model 100 in existence, still in the box with the wrappings and bows from Christmas 1954, probably won't bring a thousand dollars. My two cost under four hundred dollars, each, and are very nice shotguns.
In the 1954 Sears Wish Book, the AyA Model 100 cost more than a field grade Model 12 Winchester.
The Model 100's were an excellent value in 1954 because of favorable exchange rates with Spain, cheap Spanish labor, volume buying power of Sears, protective minimum pricing practices of Winchester, and Sears' determination to market some flagship firearms like the FN Mausers and AyA shotguns as "halo" products to sell cheaper firearms.
They were a little less than half the price of a Model 21 in 1954, but they were closer to the Model 21 for quality and features, than the price difference.
Today, the Model 100's are five to ten times cheaper, and are a better value now, than sixty some years ago.
If you are in the notion you want a Model 21, if you try the Model 100 first, you may get out of the notion, or postpone the purchase.
At least, if I send one of my Model 100's off to Mike Orlen to turn it into a skeet gun, I've not depreciated the gun.
Shotguns are for shooting, the way I see it.
If you like the Model 100 enough, then you can always sell it for about what you paid for it, and spend five or ten times more for what's basically the same type of gun, that was made in New Haven, Connecticut, and has dovetailed chopper lump barrels, instead of merely chopper lump barrels.
And Sears didn't shoot two thousand blue pill proof loads through their Model 100 AyA's either.
