Hello Dave,
Lizard and I enjoyed meeting you and and Danny as well. Great weekend in my book! In agreement with your thoughts, likely the best shooting event that we've attended together to date. Only 361 days left before that ranking might change!!
Hope you and Danny have occasion to visit VB this summer, and if not consider this an invitation! Water's a little bit warmer here, and fly-fishing for flounder with some of my flounder-pounder flys is likely alot easier than the entomological mystery tour that one has to embark on to catch the elusive rainbows, browns, etc. that you folks are used to up there.
Appreciate the welcome,
John

Thanks John we may take you up on that some day! Are you and Lizard going to Hidden Hollow?

Mr. John Liles, I did not meet you at the Southern because I couldn't make it this year but I must say you have indeed made another new friend here simply because I like the way you make a point... or several, in fact. Wish I could have met you and your daughter and shot with you. Maybe next time. I hope so.

There have been a lot of good encouraging opinions expressed on this thread and even though I might have come across as the dissenter I have nothing but the best interests of the PGCA and all of the forum users, be they PGCA Members, Forum Members or "lurkers", at heart when I made my earlier posts and I stand by what said. It is very good to know what other people think about our organization and our forum so Thank You all for your positive words.

John mentions that our original poster has bad manners. Marcus describes our original poster as "puerile", a good assessment also. I described his behavior as impolite. The person who, a while back, was suspended from participation in this forum was all three, as well as disruptive to the users of the forum. The original poster on this thread knows that his behavior and sometimes his demeanor is unacceptable, but continues to post contentious rhetoric, then bows out when the words hit the fan. He is otherwise a positive contributor to the forum. What is going on here?

Good business sense?
 

I missed the original post but I think I've got the gist of it.

From a purely economical standpoint, wouldn't it be in every Parker owners best interest to educate anyone and everyone with even the slightest interest in these fine vintage guns? I enjoy all of the pictures I see from all of the various shooting events but I must say, you guys aren't getting any younger (except for AmarilloMike :rotf:). To me, it just makes good business sense to cultivate a future market for vintage guns or indeed, our wives will be selling our guns for what we've told them we've paid for them for lack of any knowledgeable or interested buyers in the future.

As always, :bowdown:
Bobby

Bobby,

It seems that is what the older Parker guys figured out!

Toward the original discussion, this forum will always have lurkers. Often though, over time some lurkers become interested in buying a Parker Gun because the PGCA allows them to hang out here. Eventually some lurkers will join PGCA where if they had not been allowed to lurk, most probably they would have not joined.

My personal example is that a few years ago I lived in Northern Virginia and often saw the PGCA display at the Nations Gun Show in Chantilly (Dulles) Virginia. I remember talking to Bill and others at their table but that wasn't enough to interest me in Parkers. I became interested in Parkers in large part due to this forum and the information which was readily shared.

Because of the action types, frame sizes, and other factors Parker Guns can seem overwhelming to a new guy. What I most like about this forum is that it is open to new people and that the members make great efforts to educate them. Sometimes as members we may not always agree but that's because we all have opinions base on our experiences and perceptions.

While I encourage active forum members to become PGCA members, especially those very active forum members, I would not want to exclude them from participating in this open exchange of knowledge and ideas.

Mark

I bought my first Parker, then found this forum. For about a year I was a forum member, gaining a lot of info. I started feeling guilty of being informed but not being a member of the PGCA so I joined. Not everyone will, but I think with an open forum it encourages people to join. Oh, a lot of you guys are hurting my feelings when you don't include Remington along with the other fine doubles. I rate the 1894 right up there with any of them. Paul

If we can dispute and argue data, facts, ideas, and ideals instead of trying to assign names to behavior and impute motives to those we disagree with this will be a very pleasant BBS.

Best,

Mike

I asked four questions intended to spark thoughtful discussion among non forum lookers, forum members and pgca members

Would it be possible to have dealer members post parkers for sale here like we used to do in the Parker pages

How do we move lookers into becoming forum members

How do we move forum members into becoming pgca members

I commented that it seemed to me that this forum had become the pre eminant shotguN collecting site and I asked if there was any way to measure that


For those questions I got what I felt were inappropriate comments so I withdrew the question.

I am presently out in the hill sending this on a cell phone so - apologize if this post is not up to grammatical standards.i