The L.C. Smith Collectors Association
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    Re: LC Smith, Fox or Parker...How do they compare ? Archived Message

    Posted by Ed Muderlak on December 19, 2007, 12:07 pm, in reply to "LC Smith, Fox or Parker...How do they compare ?"

    Lots of "loaded" questions and answers to the quintessential provocation: "Who's best?"

    If "best" is dollar denominated one can check out Roy Eckrose's bean counting on doublegunshop.com and the answer is that 104 Parkers sold at public auction during 2004 averaging $4,382 while 101 L.C.Smiths brought $1,274 (16 Parker Trojans averaged $1,333). The Parkers ranged from $250 to $31,625 (LCS $172 to $18,400); 54% of the Parkers were above $2,000 vrs 15% of LCS.

    I didn't crunch Eckrose's numbers for other years; these were current when I wrote them into a chapter in my new book. Meanwhile, a LCS Deluxe grade brought $138,000 and the Czar's Parker $287,500; any number of Colt revolvers have brought over $400,000 and the record gun is a Winchester Mod.66 that sold for $684,500, so if averages are bullet proof, that beat up Mod. 66 is America's "Best Gun." But a caveat: Lake Michigan is on the average four feet deep; don't drown in the averages.

    The LCS Collectors Assn exists because some find the LCS "Best" for them. THe best arguement in my view is the more-gun-grade-for-grade-for-the money, which is supported by the Eckrose survey. Other issues like side-lock versus box-lock and fractured stock heads are latter-day topics that had little currency when the guns were in current production.

    To get inside the heads of our gun-totin' ancestors we need to go back to the written words of wisdom in the late-nineteenth century when the hammers went inside. W.W.Greener made a box-lock and simply stated that the need for side plates was no longer necessary and the box-lock was easier and less labor intensive to make; no mention of "strength" one way or the other. The idea that side-locks enable or enhance engraving is a latter-day rationalization to justify one's predisposition to a side-lock gun. If strength was an issue after 125 years of box-lock dominance all the Lefevers, Foxes, Parkers, Win. Mod.21s, Ithacas, etc. would be in the bone yards of obsolescence. Not so. Nor has history proved any detriment to hammerless guns with side locks.

    I have always been an advocate of light loads in relatively-new old guns. By this I mean that a 1930s Parker Bros or Remington Parker--or latest LCS--is inherantly better for shooting than a turn of the century gun. Think of the Duryea motor car circa 1896 or the Wright Bro's aircraft ca. 1903 versus automobiles of the late 1930s or a Beechcraft Staggerwing that was the Lear Jet of 1936. Just because Destry's ca.1896 BH looks like a latter-day BH, one needs to consider that alloy steel did not come into play in gun making till about 1905, and it kept getting better and better--so much so that the single-fit Mod.21 was the death knell for the double-fit Parkers and other guns with case colors.

    Punch line is that one should consider all the other hundred-year-old complex tools he is still using for the original purpose intended when he takes to the field or traps with an old SxS shotgun. It is a long proven fact that a SxS is not "best" for breaking targets or reducing small game to possession. So the specious question about which of the certified non-best shotguns is the best of the non-best cannot be answered except from the standpoint of personal preference. EDM

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