Trigger Happy
Happy Trails for all at auction featuring Roy Rogers and Dale Evans gun collectibles.
By: Meghan Saar 11/03/2009
“Roy Rogers and Dale Evans came riding (in a jet) out of the sunset to Tampa yesterday to oversee a weekend shooting contest at River Ranch Acres, near Lake Wales.
“Roy was wearing his famous white hat, and Dale was chic in a royal-blue suit, and everyone was happy to see ’em. There was even a bouquet of roses for Dale,” reported the St. Petersburg Times on December 9, 1966.
Sponsored by Winchester as part of its centennial celebration, the three-day National Claybird Tournament had flown out the famous Westerns actors so Roy could serve as grandmaster for the competition that would determine the nation’s best shooting team. Local champions were packing their bags for the round trip charter flight they won, which would take them from New York to London on BOAC’s VC-10 jet; regional winners were scoping out the best spot in their yards to place their new family-sized swimming pools from Olin Mathieson Chemical Company (which had merged its Western Cartridge Company with Winchester Repeating Arms Company by 1935); and regional runners-up were revved up on their Suzuki Hill-Billy mopeds. For the five national champions who would win the competition that December, their prize was a custom made, Pigeon Grade Model 21 Winchester Shotgun.
Roy and Dale were avid sport shooters themselves, so Winchester presented them with two custom built Model 21 Grand American shotguns—a kickstarter 12 gauge for Roy and a 20 gauge befitting a sport shooter hunting small game for Dale. Both of these presentation firearms hammered in as the top Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum lots during Rock Island Auction’s September 11-13, 2009, sale. The 20-gauge shotgun sold for a $40,000 bid, while the 12 gauge sold for $37,500.
The “First Winchester,” the Model 1866 repeating rifle, was not replicated at the New Haven, Connecticut, plant for the centennial, although Italy marketed its Model 1866 replica in the U.S. in 1973. Instead Winchester announced in January 1966 that it would refine its sporting firearm, the Model 94 lever action, into a Centennial ’66 Model, as a carbine and a full-length rifle. By close of the National Sporting Goods trade show in February, Winchester had sold all the Centennial ’66 Models it could conceivably make that year, limiting the production run to 102,039.
To close out its 100th year, the factory looked to its first double barrel shotgun manufactured at the New Haven plant, the Model 21. (Their previous double barrel shotguns were English imports released under the Winchester name.) The hammerless shotgun was produced in 12, 16, 20, 28 and .410 gauge from 1931 to 1960, and then made in its Custom Shop until 1982 in three styles: Custom Grade, Pigeon Grade and Grand American. By then, the New Haven plant had reincorporated as U.S. Repeating Arms Company and Pigeon Grade was dropped from the line. Custom orders for the remaining Model 21 shotguns were produced in New Haven until 1993.
The value of one of these custom built guns depends on two factors: the amount of engraving present on the firearm and whether the shotgun was produced in the Custom Shop era of 1960-82 or Pre-Custom Shop of 1932-59, according to Cowboy Action Shooting: Gear, Guns, Tactics by John Taffin. Pre-Custom Shop shotguns are 10 to 20 percent higher in value, and those with full-coverage game scene and scroll engravings sell higher than those with a small amount of scroll.
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