Parker books purchased

[Pa SxS]

Back in July, Tom Wooden and I were contacted by a gun store in Florida about possibly purchasing the original Parker Brothers Order and Stock Books. John Davis traveled to Florida to meet with these people and examine what they had. You can read about this in the Parker Pages when it arrives at your door step in a few days. I won't go into how this all came about, you can read it for yourself. The BOD negotiated with the owners and the Books were bought.

The Order Books have already been digitized in their entirety. Nothing gained there except ownership. It's the Stock Books that we are now able to recopy. Recopying the Stock Books will give us additional information on things such as Weight, Patterning, Frame sizes, and in many cases the type of shell used in the patterning such as weight of shot, drams, and powder used plus many times the chamber size is also listed. We have a total of 52 Stock Books and I've re-copied 5 of them so far. No more copying until I pick up the rest of the Stock Books at the Southern.

What does this mean for someone who already has a letter and wants the additional information added to their letter? I'll let that up to the BOD to decide what the cost should be.

Looks like I'll be busy for awhile!

I should add that the books were re-photographed using a Nikon digital camera. Each picture is 5 to 7 mb in size so they can really be blown up on your computer screen.