The first over-under that I ever bought turned out to be s very low number Browning Superposed (S/N 944P). The auction made no mention of the age of the gun, or really much else. They sold it as your standard Superposed with no distinguishing features. I would like to get the opinions of the experts on this board with regards to what I have. How early is the gun? What does the “P” stand for? What is the marketability of such a gun? What is the current value in today’s market? How many were made that year? I apologize for the ignorance but old shotguns are outside my wheelhouse. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.
and of course my browning ref book is 500 miles from me! go on line and see if matt eastmans book is on pdf file. itll have your answer. good luck.
No doubt you have a beut here. This is a 1931 Superposed Gr 2 "Pigeon" grade gun here. It was probably made Fall/Winter 1930 for Browning in Liege, Belgium. Exact dates are a WAG. We generally use 2,000 guns per year as a guide, beginning July 1930. The 1931 "Model Year" ran July 1930 to June 1931...give or take. So you have a Pre-War Pigeon Grade, which is a great find. Also you have the Single Selective Trigger, or SST, which is a replacement of the original single trigger. The original single trigger had a slide selector switch on the left side of the trigger, thus the O and U there. Move fwd to fire Over barrel first, slide back to fire Under barrel first. At some point, it had a gold SST installed, available after 1938, so now the safety selector on the top tang moves left\right to select which barrel fires first. IMHO, this reduces the collector value of the gun, but oh well, it's still a great gun. Hard to estimate value, but you have a rare gem here. That said, Pre-War high grade guns are scarce because of the Great Depression...they just didn't make that many.
