The old days

[Kevin McCormack]

Shotgun News and the want ads in American Rifleman.

[Bill Murphy]

Kevin is right. Gun List is a modern day item. There was plenty of gun collecting before Gun List. My collection of American Rifleman from the late twenties to WW2 shows rare collector Parkers in the classifieds that have not shown up on the radar again in the 63 years I have been collecting. Before Peter Johnson's book in 1960, there was virtually nothing in print to help a Parker collector. Before 1960, collectors worked off the seats of their pants, using their checkbooks to further their knowledge.

[Larry the Gun Guy]

Originally Posted by Kevin McCormack

Shotgun News and the want ads in American Rifleman.

This is a great thread. I haven't read why it went from Shotgun News to The Gun List mentioned yet. Aaron, Shotgun News was a large format, like 12" x 16" newspaper style reader. And so was The Gun List. Shotgun News was totally random as to the ads; no organization at all. There were ads for guns shows and gun stores mixed in amongst all of the classified ads for guns. When you got the periodical it was a test in the accuracy of speed reading, you couldn't just turn to the "P"s for Parker. And then came a technological leap. This new classified gun newspaper, The Gun List, came out was organized alphabetically. What an innovation! Well, a lot of people immediately jumped to this new fangled "organized" classified paper so you could immediately find those Parkers and Winchesters. And Shotgun News just started to fade to the background and eventually went away. In those days knowledge was power and the "old" guys that had been trading guns all their lives had all the knowledge. You had to gain their confidence to start getting those grains of knowledge because there were very few books that had any useful information. Most of the books that really expanded the collecting interests were penned the the late 80s and 90s. Folklore and campfire stories was the source of great information in those days and you can imagine there was some BS floating around out there as well. Not intentional, but there was little basis of fact. The good old days indeed.