Special shout-out to @Ellenbr for that serial number list. I can now make sense of mine, since it falls around 1894/1895.

This tale starts over a decade ago, when a buddy and I went up to SARCO to see what they had. There were two wooden barrels of German-made doubles; IIRC all with what appeared to be Israeli police hang tags, most in 12 gauge and all reasonable priced.

One in particular had all of the Wagernian features I was looking for - yes, it called to me.





[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]


[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]


I vaguely remember my buddy chose two that had what looked like preWW2 dates on the water tables, so I naively assumed mine was from November 1965 (yeah yeah, that's the original chamber size). Note the 12/70,mm chamber markings left & right, with the subtle SARCO import mark on the right.

It currently travels in a low profile fishing rod bag
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

So how did a pile of pre-WW2 German-made double-barrels wind up getting confiscated by the Israelis 15-20 years ago?

Good question. Maybe it was one of those DDR (East German) brokered trade deals, like old shotguns for Gaza oranges from Palestine.










 

Last edited by Story; 06/01/25 08:41 AM.