A .410 Parker Story with No Yard Sale

Bill Murphy · 04-11-2013, 09:38 AM

What seems like a PGCA lifetime ago, my phone rang very late at night. Usually, that would be Jack Puglisi in a dither, but this time it was Ron Kirby. Things had not always been smooth with Ron and me, so I was very curious. Ron had received a call from a Parker owner who needed advice and an appraisal of his late uncle's gun. He asked if I would call the man and try to give him a hand. Yup, I can do that. The next day I called the gentleman and asked how I could help him. He and his brother jointly own their uncle's gun and want to sell it and split the money. I asked where the gun was located and was given an address in Bethesda, Maryland. When I was fourteen years old, I bought my first Parker, a 28 gauge, from a young man in Bethesda. From my then place of employment, The Gentleman Hunter gun store, I could have seen the Parker if the owner had held it over his head. We made an appointment for a visit with the Parker and its owners. It turned out to be a wonderful, all original, field used VHE Skeet .410 with a scarce capped pistol grip zero frame size stock with original checkered butt. The sale was not immediate, requiring my hand typed four or five page appraisal, which was presented to Butterfield's for approval. Apparently, Butterfield's pronounced my appraisal complete and honest and suggested that the brothers pick a number and sell the gun to me. Wow, that was a piece of news. A number was selected from the appraisal, agreed on by all parties, and the deal was done within a few days of Ron's call. In my junk pile, I had a nice 28 gauge Abercrombie and Fitch VC case which Kevin McCormack elegantly refitted for the .410 and presented to me with a gift wrapped box of .410 skeet loads, which still live in the case with the gun and snap caps. The crack in the forend was repaired by Dewey Vicknair and everything else works as new. The brothers told me the gun had never been fired at a clay target, its only use being as a Northern Virginia bird gun. The gun is pictured on the cover of the August 2004 Skeet Shooting Review.