Thanks for the warm welcome guys! As a young-ish (30) man, an original Parker in huntable condition is far beyond my financial reach so I feel very fortunate to have found these Parker Repros and, from information I've read online, they seem to be every bit as reliable as the older Parkers albeit missing a certain je ne sais quoi. Hopefully I'll be able to add that after years of hunting in the field.
I'll try to take some pictures tonight of the gun. A few things I noticed in my initial inspection, good and bad.
Good - The serial number on the gun starts with a 'P' which, in the shop, I assumed meant Parker but I have since
learned here that it stands for Prototype. Not necessarily any additional value, but cool to me nonetheless.
Bad - On further inspection, the bore of the barrel marked as Full visually appears more open than the barrel marked as Modified and slightly lopsided in thickness (left barrel in photo). This has me concerned that someone may have altered this gun in the past. I don't have a quality gunsmith in Seattle so I'll be shipping my barrels to a gunsmith I trust to get an accurate measurement and review of them. Crossing my fingers this gun hasn't been wrecked by an amateur in the past otherwise I'll have to return it to the shop. I was strongly considering opening up the Full to IC to accomodate steel shot anyway so, if it was done well, it wont be the end of the world, bit it seems off just looking at it.
Additionally, the gun seems to have sat for a very, very long time. The oil is dried to the point that the single trigger selector mechanism is stuck on the L barrel and is immovable. I'll need to have a competent gunsmith give it a good cleaning, anyone have any recommendations beyond the
ones in this thread?