Stock Carving
 

You can tell what this Parker was used for just by looking at the stock. Very nice!!

http://www.gunsinternational.com/Par...n_id=100536864

I like it !!! I do not like the price though.
David

Tell me about it. Some sellers think folk art destruction of a collector gun adds thousands of dollars in value. I like it too.

It's very high quality carving, but I wish someone gave the carver a plank instead. It's a 1900 gun, not 1907.

I think the 'folk art' carving, if well done, is especially nice but doesn't necessarily affect value.

Being a new setter owned, one really appealed to me a year or so ago and I'm sorry I didn't win the auction. It had a setter on point nicely carved in relief on the side of the stock.




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It makes me sad to see this. I think any carving like this on a gunstock is just plain tacky looking.

Obviously Carving has its place on guns like Kentucky rifles and a good amount of early European guns are very nicely done.

Small amounts of carving worked into checkering patterns on the right guns can be nice, but any other sort of relief carving on a butt I can do without.

I think that tastefully relief-carving a gun's stock in order to personalize it is a whole lot better than bobbing a gun's barrels in order to 'personalize' it.... or replacing the perfectly good wood with some kind of bizarre exotic wood in order to 'personalize' it.

JOMHO

That is all fine and good. Personalization is just that, making something your own.

What gets me is all the examples of this that are seen on the market and the seller is pricing it as if the carving is not there. Because once the gun moves on from the original person who did or commissioned the carving, the value of the gun has been negatively effected.

Speaking in general terms, of course, that can certainly be said of most of those that have been 'personalized' in one form or another but there are exceptions to every rule. And I think these two disclaimers, "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder" and then there's "One man's trash is another man's treasure" might speak to such situations. I would "treasure" that one on gunbroker that I missed with the setter nicely carved into the stock on both sides. To me there was a real "beauty" in that gun.

Again, JMHO

Not a fan of Birds Eye Maple on a Parker Dean? The nice thing about this gun is that it was obviously cherished the original owner. This was someone's pride and joy, and they carefully used the heck out of it. I wish all my guns had floor plate screws that were as nice.

I bought a very nice Miroku 20ga SxS with one side of a stock carved like that. Gun shoots great and the carving is well done too. The price was somewhere under $300.