Hi, By strange coincidence, I stumbled back across this site (which I had joined some years ago, but thought I,d lost it), when I returned home today, after dropping off 3 of my pinfires at Ryedale Auctions, here in the UK. They are to be sold on April 24th. I have been a keen collector of pinfire shotguns since 1976, when I bought my first one a Pape of Newcastle 12g. It had an unusual fitting on the left side of the action, held in place by 2 screws (with identical engraving to the rest of the gun, ) which I believe was made by the maker.Difficult to describe, this part ad a slot in it, and a thumbscrew which went into the slot.............trial and error (and my own affliction!) lead me to believe eventually that it was to hold a small item up to block off vision from the left eye! A master eye device! This was confirmed by Geoffrey Boothroyd, and a member of Sothebys gun dept. at a Game Fair at Chatsworth House, in the 1980,s........since 1976, I have collected pinfires, and English hammerguns. Not having deep poickets, my collection grew slowly, and I had to focus on what I found interesting, rather than on buying the very best. I looked for interesting patents and designs.
However, if I tried to talk about all I have owned, or handled, or seen, this post would take me forever to write! So I hope to keep adding to it over the next few weeks. I have been slowly disposing of my collection over the last 9 years, as no one in my family has the same interests as me. The 3 I sent to Auction today were 2 by John Blanch
and one by Masu Brothers. One of the Blanch guns had a grip safety, a hangover from percussion days. I believe it may have started life in Blanch,s workshop as a percussion, but it was converted to pinfire by Blanch. I hope this is of interest, I have hundreds of Boothroyd articles on shotguns going back to the early 1970,s. I also have over 1,000 gun catalogues, by all the UK auction houses covering the same period. My last 3 pinfires (a Purdey, a Perrins side lever, and a Mortimer) will be going to auction in July. Soirry this is all a bit jumbled, but when I came across this site, I just had to talk to someone about this subject, all my old collector friends have now passed on. David````````
