Picking up my first pre-1913 Smith gun. This one has 30-inch Damascus tubes and seems to be clean, well cared-for, and mostly original. The seller dates it to 1899, but I can't confirm that date with the information available to me at this point. Colorado has a newly-instituted a 3-day wait for post-1898 guns (sigh!), so I'd like to be able to ship this one as an "antique" if that's possible. It's SN is 92579. Could this gun be earlier or am I just trying too-darn hard?
Also, I'm figuring on shooting it for the occasional clay event here (it's 8lbs plus weight will be quite an asset on targets, my other SXS game-guns are too-light otherwise). Any proscriptions I need to consider? It has some light freckling in the rather-substantial tubes, full-chokes and an apparently minor crack starting at the back of one of the lock-plates (right side). The wood otherwise looks remarkably good for it's age.
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