Were Parker shotguns made when ordered?

[Hammer Gun]

Robert, I might have a copy of that I will check my storage boxes, I do remember the article, a inter office memo I believe is correct, gary

[Dean Romig]

I remember such a memo produced after the war suggesting the necessity of curtailing the production of the Parker Gun because Remington was losing money on the venture but I haven't seen or heard of any memo suggesting starting it up again.





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[Robert Delk]

As I recall the letters I had started out with one letter talking about starting production again and the last letters referring to selling off parts and the lack of machinery. There was also paper referring to what parts were on hand. I sold it in a folder that came with the correspondence originally.The paper I have collected always seems to be valued long after I have gotten rid of it.

[Hammer Gun]

From 1945 to 1948 the matter was tossed back and forth with many inter office memos, and time studies, they even thought of buying a gun from another company and turning it into a Parker, but decided if there was going to be a Parker reinventing Remington would do it, Finally the cost proved to be to prohibitive and the decision to scrap a lot of the old Parker machinery was made. Griffin and Howe was thinking of buying some barrel machinery and start to make barrels but decided not to, and a lot of the machinery was scrapped, some of the machinery was scrapped prior to the war for the war effort. Gary

[Dean Romig]

Finally, sometime in the late 1980's or early 90's Remington initiated an extremely short run of Parker shotguns.



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[Hammer Gun]

I guess it is as it should be? If there were new Parkers floating around not counting the reproductions, I doubt our old guns would be as sentimental to us. The plain fact is for whatever reason the Parker family made and continued to make this great gun I do not think a lot of money was made but somewhere I have the dollar total of each year of production, these papers and a couple of put together books I bought in Louisville, years ago some of the papers are very interesting and sheds a lot of light on the thinking at Remington on whether to revive the Parker gun, Gary

[Fishtail]

OK, I stand corrected as I did not pick up on the first post that limited the discussion to the 1930's.

But really....Parker/Remington was losing money in the 1930's? I'd guess 80% of all companies were losing money in the 1930's...

Plus...those lower grade guns represent what's called 'baseload' for the factory. They night have lost money on an individual basis, but they kept the lights on and the employees paid so that when a high grade gun order came in, they were able to produce it. If the low grade guns had been absent, there wouldn't have been enough volume to keep the doors open.

[Dean Romig]

Excellent points Greg!






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[Heff]

If I had to guess, I would say the margins made on Parker shotguns were all in the black and probably higher on the higher grade guns. The profits on these guns were able to support the realitivly low overhead/cost of Parker Bros.
The Remington Arms Co. Would of most likely needed a much higher contribution margin to cover overhead and be "profitable"

[Bill Murphy]

There must be a bunch of those old Parker-Remington interoffice memos floating around. I believe PGCA has a collection of such items.