He put up some pictures of the side plates. Looks like a grade 1 to me.

Actually Mills, the gun is too early to have any identifiable engraving motif. The breech ball (or fence) sculpting and forend checkering were the first identifiers of quality level or dollar grade.





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Here is a pic of the forend from gun 4216 that I posted pics of earlier. It does not have the center "third" point in the checkering.

Attachment 47761

That checkering pattern, along with the level of engraving, seems to indicate a dollar grade or quality that would become the Grade 1.





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