Dollar Grade Gun

[Kevin McCormack]

Do you have a PGCA letter on this gun? If not, you should get one. This may very well be an "in-between" gun - one that was ordered out as a demo or "teaser" gun to show what could be done on the higher grade guns, especially by special order.

I once owned a 10 ga. 32" lifter gun in the 135XX range that was clearly above a $200 Grade gun but also not quite a $250 Grade gun. A careful search of the Parker record books revealed that it was an "embellished" $200 Grade gun (e.g., a bona fide "$225 Grade" gun) that had been sent to a high-volume CO dealer for display at his store for prospective customers desiring a high grade Parker Gun. It was massive 4-frame gun weighing in at just under 12 pounds. It was also incorrectly identified as a B Grade gun.

The gun was manufactured in 1878 and wound up in an estate sale in MO in the late 1940s; I purchased it from an heir of the man who bought it at auction in 1947. According to him, they used it to hunt cornfield pheasants in MO and IO routinely using 2 7/8" 10 ga. smokeless powder shells up through the 1970s, ignoring the Damascus barrels. The gun won the Best Original Hammer Parker Gun at the Concours d' Elegance of Fine Guns at The Vintage Cup, Orvis Sandanona, September 22, 2001.