I have seen first hand signs from Fox and Smith and several from Winchester and I can't believe that Parker would use something as crude as this sign appears to be in photos. I can't comment on the signs you refer to but I would bet that close up they are not as crude as they appear in the photo.There was always some attempt at at decoration on turn of the century signs and as I stated sign makers were artists and took great pride in their work.The art of chromolithography came into full flower in the late 1800's and was used by most companies to advertise their wares. it was inexpensive and there was a lot of competition to come up with the most artistic and eye catching motifs for the public view. The original are always better than the repro's but there are a lot of ersatz tin signs advertising guns that don't look to bad on the wall but you should see an original in good shape!

The same auction house that sold this sign sold an LC Smith poster a couple auctions ago that looked "questionable". This sort of thing is their stock in trade, they sell a lot of great original stuff but don't seem able to keep the "questionable" items off their sales for some reason. I'm not saying they sell fakes of course......


Destry

I think the key here is to establish the provenance of such items.These kind of things just don't show up out of thin air if they are legitimate.Show the chain of ownership over the years and a better determination can be made as to legitimacy.

Forrest, maybe someone will post a picture of a lamp with Parker shotgun in cast metal, showing the 22" length of the gun, about what the sign gun should measure since the sign is 27" according to the description. The lamp looks like a 40s thing with a weighted base and usually a double bulb fixture with pull chain. The bookend gun is smaller than the sign gun and I edited my post to eliminate discussion of this Parker.