Does the letter specify any special features? What is the price specified in the letter? Could you post a picture of the letter? Your gun is a very special Parker and we are interested in learning more about it.

With serial #177639 puts it in the first year production range. It could be the first SB made and perhaps the first SBT that wasn’t a C grade.

I posted some better photos of water table and the research letter.

That "ghost" letter S next to the 5 is quite interesting!

Interesting letter and seems like a fairly heavy trigger pull request.

Interesting gun. It's just a guess but I think the "B" and "5" were stamped over a "C" and "4". The stamps just don't look right. The stock is definitely a "C" grade stock.

Unfortunately both the Order Book and Stock Book don't define what grade or barrel steel this gun was. The Order Book just shows the price of $150 which was the standard price of SC SBT's in that time frame. The Stock Book just says "Trap". In later years it would have shown "Trap 4" in the ledger for an SC or Trap 5 for a SB. Also the barrel steel is not noted. Perhaps I should have said in the letter that the grade and barrel steel could not be determined by the records but since I knew that some real early SBT's had Titanic steel until Acme steel was introduced, I decided to write the letter as a SB grade gun.

This is an early gun and surely a Titanic barrel. It also looks like C grade, wood and metal. The stamps are a mystery.

The response regarding the research letter is disappointing. So part of the letter is inaccurate or based on assumption?

It is my opinion that this is an early SC. I won’t speculate on the water table stamps. It’s still a very nice gun and I would encourage you to take it to a trap field and enjoy it.

Trigger pull
 

It would be interesting to know if it still has a 6 pound trigger pull. Makes me think L.H. Bradley had a flinching problem. However, none of this discussion would discourage a person from taking that gun to the range and breaking trap targets.