doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Gastinne Renette 16GA - Help With Proof Marks

WC, if it's a 1908 gun, why is there no proofmark with P + another letter under a star? Or does that simply indicate that the gun did not undergo smokeless powder proof?

Hi members. I did a number of Google searches for Gastinne-Renette boxlock shotguns and only found a few images of them. There was a 24GA that was auctioned in 2012 by Cowan's Auctions, which is similar in style to mine, although it is of higher quality with lots of engraving. The auction house describes it as a 24 gauge with the barrels marked 14.9 and 1901 on the water table. This puts it close to my recent acquisition with a mark of 1908. It has the same Scott forend latch type as you can see from the pic below. Checkering pattern and stock wrist shape are similar also. Sadly, there were no pics of the barrel flats and action. Below is the auction house description.

"24 gauge, 26" barrels, S/N 4075. 12.25" LOP, highly engraved frame in floral designs interwoven; banner on both sides of the frame with Gastinne-Renette in the banner. Deep relief engraved on the back of the lobes of frame. Safety inlaid in gold. Deep relief engraved triggerguard with gold crest inlaid. Blued barrels with engraving at the breech. Finely checkered highly figured walnut stock with checkered butt. Fully checkered forearm with engraved release. Marked on the frame French proofs and Gastinne-Renette, and the number 4075 and on the front 1901. Bottom of barrels are marked 14.9 on both barrels, and 65 on both barrels along with French barrel proofs and barrel maker Leopold Bernard."

Black powder proof only...
However it was proved reinforced.
Unusual, but certainly not impossible.
WC-

good catch, BillK...
it reinforces my feeling that your gun was a true GR shop made gun.
The numbers line up pretty well. and it is interesting to see that only 17 Serial numbers were taken in 7 years...
At that time, the very bulk of the GR sales were with Belgian and St Etienne made guns, so this kind of makes sense.
It is also possible that both guns were made at about the same time, but yours (and likely its #1 sister) stayed either in stock or unfinished for a long time.
I attribute the LB 'L' date code to 1902 or thereabout.
Note that the fore-end release is identical on both guns, except for the engraving.
I have read somewhere (I think in the Laurent Bedu book), that GR in a banner means shop made. This does not seem to be true, because the 24GA has the banner but the 20 does not, and they were most certainly made in the same place.
All the best,
WC-

BTW this style of forend release can be seen on the Ideal with ejectors. It's called in French "devant a pedale".
see here for a very similar and contemporary system.
WC-

Galloping Betail Sauvage:

What info have you on the transition from a numeric date-code to a letter system regarding L. Bernard tubesets? Any info where-upon the upper rung tube maker was basing his dating modell? Or was he blazin' his on trail?


Cheers,

Raimey
rse

Nominal 24 gauge is .579" or 14.7mm. Obviously @ 14.9 this 24 gauge was slightly overbore (.587").
Still betting the seller looked at that 16.0 & called it the gauge without further checking, not realizing this was actually the size of the bores in mm.

OK, here we go. We can make a pretty good estimate of value, not price, but value based on three factors. Value is an estimate of what price might be whereas price is an agreement between willing buyer and seller. This is based on considerable market research and models. The factors are Brand Value, Original Quality grade, and Current Condition.

BV is based solely on the name on the gun. Before anyone gets in a huff, remember that this is a reflection of the broad market. Ain't my fault, just how the market acts.

OQ is based on a best fit model that has nine pigeon holes ranging from best work SLE to colonial/farmer grade. Grades are far enough apart that they are relatively easy to assign. When there is doubt, it is acceptable to interpolated between two whole number grades.

CC is based on best estimate of which of nine levels fits the gun in hand. Levels range from pristine to wall hanger. As above, levels can be fractional as needed.

The BV of this gun is level three, "most Brit makers and Continental makers with high reputation." GR fits nicely to tis definition. BV3.

OQ looks to me like grade five and a half. That is, between a best work BLE and a second grade BLE. I expect this pair of guns was ordered sans extensive engraving as a style, rather than as a cost saving. OQ5.5.

CC fits nicely as, "heavy use, but no abuse, or remanufactured" which is CC4.

BV3-OQ5.5-CC4 = $2,075. The foregoing from the photographs. Gun in hand may this estimate a bit.

Questions or comments?

DDA

Thank you Rocketman. That is an interesting approach to valuation. Is that a proprietary model you have developed? Would you be willing to share each grade of each component in more detail? How do you derive at assigning the $2,075 value after the analysis of the factors?
I would like to use the valuation model for the rest of my guns.
BillK

Hi Raimey,
As we should know by now from previous posts, Bernard has always had a tubeset stamped with a sequential number followed by a '.' and a date.
The date was replaced by a letter datecode at the end of the 19th century. This was before the Belgians did it in 1922.
The only real data I have is that my 1898 dated Rieger has a date code of 'H' and a # 35321.
So at the very earliest, and assuming all letters were used, that would place 'L' at 1902.
By the way, just less than 1000 tubesets went through the Bernard shop in that time frame.
I'll remind people that the shop was held by Leopold's widow for a long time, because he passed on 7/11/1870, just days before the Franco-Prussian war.
Also Bernard seems to have only sold assembled tubesets, and not individual barrels.
Another interesting trivia is that the Paris proof house was actually hosted by the Bernard shop at least at the very beginning.

Best regards,
WC-