Given my work, both in private sales and with the consulting I do with Morphy's I can confidently say that I handle as many or more Parker shotguns in a given year than anyone else in the country. Between buying, selling, appraising, and studying, I am in the market literally 365 days a year and many times 24 hours a day. Just like any market, it changes from minute to minute, day to day.

The guns that are the softest today are the very ordinary and mundane guns. Why would anyone stretch for a VH 12ga with 30" barrels that has less than 50% condition? Literally there are hundreds and hundreds of them for sale at this very moment all throughout the country. Just like there are literally tens of thousands of beef cattle for sale all around the country today. These guns, just like the cows, bring a certain price and that is it. There is no upward momentum for them. There never has been- and why should there be? There is plenty of supply that is met with very little demand.

The greatest change I see in the market today is NOT that there is a lack of new buyers, however, there is a lack of uneducated buyers who run around buying like chickens with their heads cut off. Today's savvy buyers are hiring people (like me) to help them buy and to vet things to make sure they are buying at a reasonable value for money. In 2019 I made several new clients who have given me their wish lists and I help them find what they are looking for. If possible, I source their wish lists and stand behind what I am selling them, with my reputation and checkbook on the line to back it up.

In the days before the internet, the visible supply was much lower than it is today so there was a perceived scarcity for certain things. With the internet, you are able to see a much broader swath of the available supply, and thus common guns that were regionally rare are not perceived as rare anymore (think BHE grade 12 bore guns in rural mid-west). There are probably 6-10 BHE 12ga for sale right now on the net as where 20 years ago a guy could go to 6 gun shows a year and only see 1.

In conversations with my friend Steve Barnett, we both commented how 2019 was the very best year we had ever had in the gun business. Selling the more rare and collectible guns is as good now as it has ever been. Selling pedestrian guns, for which there was never much demand, is not hard today, its simply a matter of finding the right price at which it will sell. The run of the mill VH 12ga gun isnt going to bring what it brought 6 months or 6 years ago, and neither is your Amazon stock or your feeder cattle.

In the May 2020 Morphy Auction we will have Carl Balderson's estate collection of fine Parker shotguns. Carl collected a number of wonderful small bore guns, many with rare features. Many of these guns are in fine original condition. It is certainly going to be the greatest offering of fine American Sporting Shotguns in the last 5-10+ years. I am completely confident that the guns will be met with plenty of demand given their quality, condition, and configuration.

The very best guns are still selling with ease, and so are the mundane guns. The simple fact of the matter is that on the mundane guns, the only reason to compel a buyer is through a low price. The best guns speak for themselves and their realized prices continue to do the same.

There are fewer and fewer of us old f*rts, and most of the "new" hunters (at least the ones I see) seem to be into "faster, higher, farther"; that could explain a down market for good, shootable guns.

And that’s where Josh’s “uneducated buyer” enters the picture.


I will say however, we don’t ‘need’ Parkers while we do need beef cattle.





.

I'd like to find an Amazon stock for one of my Parkers.....

i will have this to say there is very few parker guns in my area steve barrnet has all of them around here...i could not afford a high grade parker but those low dollar guns is the ones i m interested in...not to many 500 dollar parkers out there....charlie

I can only say that I've had three Parkers for sale at an Alaska gunshop for a year and have not heard a word from the shop. They're used to the "high prices for guns in Alaska" program and can't seem to figure out how to move them.

Probably my fault. I got into the stock market in the 90s, the market crashed. Got into real estate, and construction in the mid 2000s - crashed em both. And now Parkers?
I jumped out of my office window, but the ground was only three feet below.

Ill take a clean vh or vhe any day of the week. Just as effective on game as any higher grade and for a lot less money. Dont need the fancy, smanchie ones

One more thought on the gun situation. If you want an investment, please go to your local bank and buy a CD. If you want beef, buy a feeder steer. If you want something tangible that you can use and enjoy, that you dont have to feed, you dont have to worry about breaking its leg in a groundhog hole, you dont have to worry about it dropping dead for no reason at all, or you dont want to worry about it getting eaten by wolves, then consider buying a nice Parker shotgun.

Yesterday I helped a young man, who is a senior in college and just bought his first Parker which is an early Damascus GH 12, measure his barrel thickness. He is all enthusiastic about it and was going to shoot it today. Says he is going to join PGCA and get a letter. He already checked and records are available

You get one, you get a few more and soon there are many.

A woman is a woman but a Parker is a gun.

No you don't have to worry about those things but you do have to worry about tripping and dropping a nice Parker shotgun. You can never get away from all risk. Sometimes bad things happen to good guns :crying:

There is some good news, amidst all of this doom and gloom;
68 Ford Mustangs driven in a movie by Steve McQueen are still fetching good prices. So are Brando Rolex watches.
If you have any of these items in your collection, you're doing okay.

A tactic that worked very well for my mother who had an antique shop in the very high-traffic town of Newburyport, MA was if a nice piece of antique furniture sat in her shop for more than a few months she would change the price tag to double the amount she had been asking before.... within a week or so it would sell, without fail.

Maybe it was because word got around... "Oh that Grace Romig - better buy it now if you like it because pretty soon you won't be able to afford it."





.

But if uneducated buyers are running around buying up everything they can find, that should drive the price up, not down, no?

No.... They are buying all the guns they can at depressed prices, so they are effectively supporting a down market





.

Dean's mother's strategy was premiered by the Zippo lighter Company, as I understand it. When the lighters were first introduced at something like $.50, they were considered cheap, and poorly made. Doubled the price, and the rest is history. I suspect any of us who were (are) smokers had a Zippo at some point

i still got my zippo lighter it would light under extreme conditions if you kept her filled up with fluid and flint...burnt my leg a few times with over filling that zippo and fluid leaking out of it on my leg...but heh aint nothing perfect not even a parker...charlie

I've done that too Charlie; it huts like heck! I carry mine every day but it might be a week or more between uses. I finally put a butane conversion cartridge in mine because I was tired of it always being out of fluid every time I went to use it.

What was the brand of handwarmer that used the same fluid, and would burn your thigh like crazy when put in your pocket improperly?

Jon-E handwarmer

I think Zippo actually made some of them too. Mine is marked Peterson's.

You guys are great, over the last two days I have read these posts while sweating out three real estate deals, all going in different directions. Wound up laughing at the zippo lighter and the one still in my tackle box and feel much better about my Parkers. Thanks for the therapy!

Where do we send the therapy bill Alfred !? :whistle:

duplicate deleted

When I worked for my Uncle Sam, Zippos were the thing. We didn't buy fluid, we hung the insert by a wire in a tank of MOGAS in our truck or jeep. By the way, I am still using my Jon-E warmers.

I don't have my Grandfathers Parker trap gun but I do have his Zippo. I had to send it back for refurbishing (will that hurt the value:rotf:) but they got it back to working order and at no charge. The closest they could come to a mfg date was prior to WWII.

Had the same thing happen when I tried to sell an RBL Launch Edition that didnt fit me well. Listed it at what I paid for it and it just sat there.
The prior seller saw the listing and e-mailed me with a note to mark it up by $300. With some trepidation I did so, and it sold in a week. Go figure.

Some friends did that on a house. Sat for sale forever. They switched agents, the new agent raised the price and it sold right away. Go figure

As WC Fields said, never give a sucker an even break

After reading all these I need therapy

I would say the internet has saturated the market. High grade, high quality guns are still demanding good prices. The run of the mill, average condition guns are now easy to find. I can sit in my chair with my phone and look at a few hundred of them. The best guns for the buck I have purchased in the last couple of years have come from members on this site. Honest guns at honest prices by honest individuals.

Same here Murph. (Except for the Jon-E handwarmer.)

I spent part of my USN enlistment (1954 - 1957) on a Fleet Oiler/Tanker/Sea Going Gas Station - the USS Allagash AO97.

We refueled ships at sea including aircraft carriers where we would supply them with aviation fuel for their prop driven aircraft.

Aviation fuel worked fine in our Zippo lighters.

https://i.imgur.com/Bw3HqT8.jpg

the gas in our old 5 ton trucks did not burn to good..hard to light and smoked like a tar keel......charlie

I guess it hasn't bottomed yet...

I was at a gun show in Manchester, NH today and saw a poorly restocked DH 20 ga. with a beavertail forend without the correct reinforced forend loop for sale by a known dealer....

Anyone care to guess on the price?
.................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. .................................................. ................................ No?







$11,995 :shock::eek::rotf::biglaugh:


I hope he gets his price - ALL of our guns will increase in value if he does.


.

Dean, That dealer must have had his head somewhere the sun don't shine! Gary

I should have made a low-ball offer...... but I was afraid he'd accept it.:eek:





.

I think that most of us that have been Parker buyers for some time have seen prices go up and down, win sometimes and lose sometimes, I buy usually to enhance my collection sell off a gun to acquire a better condition gun or a rare one.That has always made me ask the question " Which is better a high condition gun or a rare one"? There are several high condition guns around in all grades, but you have to look hard to find a one of a kind! Gary

There will always be individuals and "dealers" selling a vintage gun with a "name" who have no clue as to what they are selling, and those buying with no clue as to what they are buying. As said, as the greatest generation passes, leaving guns to those without interest therein or knowledge thereof, there will be more and more guns appearing for sale with prices disconnected from reality...and some at a bargain. Thanks to internet auction sites and collector's forums such as this one, there is no justification for not having a somewhat educated price range targeted for the gun one is seeking.

Relevant story: a buddy was at a small auction and bidding on a damascus barrel Parker hammer 16g against an older lady. She outbid him and bought the gun and he approached her politely afterward and asked why she wanted the gun - for her grandson for turkey hunting! He tried to explain, again politely, that plan might not be wise, which she didn't believe.

Hopefully we can get a report from the upcoming Las Vegas show. I thought the last one I attended was a sad reflection of the aging, and passing, of the "gun guy" generation.
OTOH as that generation passes, their accumulated wealth will go to their heirs, some of whom may share the interest in high grade, high value, collector and using grade guns.

A wise man once told me two things. 1 it's easier to buy a gun than to sell a gun and 2 it's easier to sell a $3000 gun than a $30000 gun. I have found these to be true on more than one occasion.

This particular dealer knows exactly what he’s selling. I think he may be in over his head on this gun, and he may have made a BIG mistake when he (or his consignor) bought it... and too late discovered his mistake.





.