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Old September 22, 2010, 07:13 PM   #2
PetahW
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Join Date: September 19, 2008
Posts: 4,678
The Gardone Valley area of Brescia, (Northern) Italy has been (for several hundred years) a gunmaking center - mostly composed of small specialists, each of which may make (say) only barrels, others only the stocks, others the actions, and yet others assemble/fit the guns and market them to import/export firms like Armscorp, Navy Arms, etc, etc.

While some of the small companies have grown into large corporations over the years (Beretta, Benelli, Franchi, etc), thay all usually marked in some way whatever they made.

The marks stamped into the metal of the action flats and the barrel sides/undersides, all normally hidden when the gun is fully assembled, can sometimes be deciphered to discern who/when made the gun.

While some value could be attributed to one of the better makers, part of the values would also lie in features (like ejectors/not, vent rib/not, etc) and condition (including mechanical operating condition) & engraving/decoration.

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