Posted by Tom Archer on December 15, 2015, 8:10 am, in reply to "LC SMITH A3 12 gauge"
Don't know that anyone has ever attempted to track the numbers of surviving examples of the A3; but I can tell you that, although only 17 examples were recorded by Brophy; other unrecorded examples were made and several of those have surfaced. A more recent analysis of the surviving shipping records by Jim Stubbendieck found one or two more examples examples (don't recall the exact count?) missed by Brophy; and several examples of original Smith guns grade marked A3 on the gun itself, but recorded in the shipping records as a lower grade (A-2 and PE for example) are known to exist. One of those examples was the "Pratt Gun" which sold at auction 2-3 years ago; the original shipping record records that gun as an A-2, but the gun is grade marked A-3 and appears to be an original A-3 in all respects. My theory is that the Hunter brothers played accounting "games" with grade ID when it came to personal friends and well-connected business associates by making deals with special pricing on high grade guns connected to these people. To keep sales revenues consistent with the numbers of various gun grades sold, the records reflected a gun grade that would be consistent with the actual dollar amount received in the sales transaction. The one thing I can tell you as regards Hunter's A-3 is that in my collecting lifetime, I've been fortunate to see a fair number of A-3 guns; and in fact, many more examples of the A-3 than of the Deluxe Grade even though the shipping records record production of the Deluxe Grade Smith as being 1/3 higher than the A-3.