Brent, I should have said price is a component of value. Your equation has it right.
Price on it's own is simply a price, indicative of nothing else.
Parkers have a certain charisma. There is something about their hinge circle that strikes the eye as cool, but... the damn things are preposterously priced. There is a Parker mystique that has hordes of demented suckers bidding them up into the stratosphere. Parkers are just like Lugers and Colt Peacemakers and early Lever-Action Winchesters: famous, neat, but so eagerly collected, that they are priced far, far beyond reason.
You can buy lots of vastly superior British (or German or other Continental) Boxlocks for less than any Parker. A Greener, for instance, is a better gun than a Parker, better wood, much better engraving, better mechanism, and you can buy Greeners all day long cheaper than Parkers. You can, for example, buy a no-name 16g. German guild gun for peanuts that is better than a Parker.
I will admit (being not insane) I have never personally owned a Parker, but friends have lent me them, and I've hunted with them, and shot game with them, they are typically too heavy (lighter ones are rare and cost even more), they all whack you in the finger.
I will admit though, did affordable, rationally-priced Parkers exist, I'd be queuing up to get one nonetheless.
