Edgar hit one of the nails on the head about 12ga Parkers.
Other factors come into play as well. Such as this isn't new to the SxS market in any way. In the thirty years or so of chasing my SxS passions 12's other than high condition, higher grade collector quality guns have always been the red-headed stepchild in comparison to the small bores. Small bores sell--12ga's sit on the table.
Then we have the boomer factor! The boomers have been the driving factor for trends in collecting & buying from Beenie babies, to Harley's, hot rod's/muscle cars to Parkers. Let's face it, the sand in running out of our hour glasses and there's a bunch of guns coming to market because of it.
Then we have the contradictions of seeing lower grade type guns selling for what looks like cheap prices, but if you look online on the selling sites like guns international & see the asking prices "Especially by the larger dealers" you would never think that the prices are soft for 12ga Parkers or Model-21's for that matter. This could be a factor for why when you do see a 12ga offered way lower than the rest you can get the idea that it's a bargain, when in fact it's probably the one that realistically priced for the current market.
Then we have the Covid hangover effect where things went pretty nuts for a couple of years with people buying & flipping everything in sight from guns to houses. This created a bubble market of overpaying for an item and then having the air let out of the bubble and a whole bunch of folks being upside down on a bunch of the items they bought and are just now starting to take their loses on the shotgun they bought and didn't need in the first place.
The most glaring contradiction is in the clay's shooting sports. This is where the 12ga is still the king. I wish I could see some stat's on this, but I suspect that we would see there is more 12ga ammo sold in this country by far, over all the other gauges, only it isn't being shot out of SxS's in a game where O/U's & jamamatics rule the day.
Just some other factors to consider.
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