Prices Realized (RIA)

[Bill Murphy]

I have a theory about Parkers and their availability. In the early days, Parkers were being manufactured in quantity and anyone needing one just placed an order and paid retail, then went hunting. In the thirties and forties, the economy and the pressures of the war caused Parkers, both high and low grades to be sold off at much less than their retail price and true value, which also led in a small way to the downfall of Parker sales and marketing of newly manufactured guns. In the fifties and early sixties, there was little interest and traffic in Parkers, either as users or collector guns. Collector grade Parkers largely stayed in the hands of people who had owned them for years. With the advent of the Peter Johnson book and an economy that allowed and appreciated more conspicuous and discretionary consumption, Parkers started to be rooted out of the attics of long time owners. This phenomenon continued from the mid sixties well into the eighties and to a lesser extent, to the present day. Parkers were being taken off the market for many years and placed into large groups rather than one gun per hunter. The collectors and accumulators of this period continued to age, and the nineties saw the first wave of a collector's selloff that continues to the present day. Because of the state of today's economy, there is not only the continuation of the grey haired selloff, there is accellerated interest on the buying side because of the depressed pricing. So now the accumulated collections of the sixties through the nineties are spread thinly similar to the early days. Certainly some of these auction guns will go into large collections, but many will go to either new collectors or collectors who do not have large accumulations. These are the serious collectors of the next twenty to forty years, when the cycle of the sixties through the nineties will start again. Because of the repeating cycles, there will always be good Parkers to be purchased.