The Parker Story is truly the best researched and most well written book dedicated exclusively to the Parker gun and all things Parker. By itself, it is all one really needs but to get the full perspective of the Parker gun from the other authors it best to have at least read the other books, if not to own them.

Fred,

That was quite an investment in that O grade lifter for $20! You could easily double your money today:)

As far as Parker information goes, the Parker Pages is also fabulous. When I first joined PGCA in 1995 it was just a few Xerox pages stapled together. I then wandered away into the wilds of Siberia and Antarctica searching for extremophiles and meteorites and lost contact with PGCA. When I re-joined a couple of months ago, I was astonished to see what a beautiful publication it had evolved into.

Thanks are truly due to Austin Hogan, Dean Romig, Larry Frey, and the Associate and Contributing Editors and authors who have put so much work into this fine publication that does justice to these magnificent shotguns.

Richard

The one thing that Peter Johnson had going for him, that the others did not, was the chance to interview living Parker employees and get their stories. I believe that everything that came after made some use of his writing. In any event THE PARKER STORY is by far the best and most accurate and a bargain for the serious Parker Collector. JMHO

George

We like to talk about the "Best Buys" in our collecting. Some of us talk about our higher grade Parkers that were bought for peanuts back in the 70's, some of us talk about buying Parker Repros during the closeout and others talk about buying TPS at the pre-publication price. Relatively speaking, the current $195 price for blemished sets (that you will scratch your head trying to figure out what makes them blems) certainly qualifies as a "Best Buy" in my book.

I need to buy me one of those "blems" -- even though I have bee extremely careful with this beautiful set, by original TPS has begun to show signs of wear, because I keep opening it to read and drool over the pictures.

I own Johnson's, Baer's, Ed's Old Reliable and the Parker Story. I can say that of them all, I care for Baer's the least. A bit too quick of a read for me compared to Ed's Old Reliable. I think that was a well written book and enjoyable to read. Obviously Baer's book was limited to the information that was available at the time. Johnson's is a classic since it is the first book on the subject and in most ways kind of got the collector interest going.
And Hand Down TPS is the best of course by way of technical info, research and photograpy.

Brian, you are missing the best buy in Parker books other than TPS. Ed Muderlak's Shooting Flying is the most entertaining of any of them and is available on ebay for next to nothing. We should all own and read that book. Ed's Old Reliable is mostly a compilation of articles we have already read. Shooting Flying is all new material, well researched and full of fun photos.

Yeah, I need to pick that one up.

I agree with Bill on EDM's Shooting Flying.

I agree. I thought I said that several posts ago.....:rotf: