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German drilling gun.

6K views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  Jim Hauff 
#1 ·
Hello to you all.A friend of mine have inherited a German drilling gun and he had asked me to price this gun for him.I am a tactical shooter and i dont now anything about these drilling guns so please i need your help to price this gun.
On the barrels there is this writing. GUSSSTAHL-KRUFF-ESSEU.
BLOCK-VERSCHLUSS-NITRO
JAGERS-VERTICAL
WK 851 STM.G. 13G
On the receiver there is written. HEROLD EINGTR. SCHUTZM.

The box is made from leather and there is a round logo on it.the wording of the logo are. NORDD. EUTSCHER.BREMEN.in the middle of the circle a big H and LLOYD under it. the gun has two sets of barrels and a carl ziess scope with it.

Thanks for your help guys.
 
#2 ·
It sounds like a highly valuable set. Unlike an off the rack Remington or Winchester, guns like your friend's were custom made with variations in engraving and other extras. For this reason the value of a cased set like your friends can be hard to nail down w/o images. I don't have the experience to give you a reasonable price range. If it was my cased set, I would check out the high end firearms auction sites to see what similar cased sets sold for. You hardly ever find two of them exactly alike, but after you have seen the realized prices of several sets of similar quality and condition you can make a fair estimate as to the value of your set.
 
#3 ·
Is the logo on the case a paper sticker? I think it is a label put on when the gun was checked in as part of a passenger's baggage on the "Bremen", a Norddeutscher-Lloyd passenger steamer on the New York run.

The barrel marking means they were made of cast steel, supplied by the famous (or infamous) Krupp of Essen. "BLOCK-VERSCHLUSS-NITRO" means the gun is locked by means of a block (I can't tell from that just what it means in terms of mechanics) and is made for smokeless powder. "JAGERS" means "hunter's"; "vertical" means just that and might refer to how the block works.

HEROLD is surely a name, but I don't know what EINGTR means. SCHUTZM. probably is an abbreviation for "Schutzmark" or trade mark.

WK 851 is probably the type of powder used for the proof testing; the St.M.G. indicates the rifle barrel was proved with a Stahlmantel Geschoss or steel jacket bullet weighing 13 grams.

Jim
 
#4 ·
Is the logo on the case a paper sticker? I think it is a label put on when the gun was checked in as part of a passenger's baggage on the "Bremen", a Norddeutscher-Lloyd passenger steamer on the New York run.

The barrel marking means they were made of cast steel, supplied by the famous (or infamous) Krupp of Essen. "BLOCK-VERSCHLUSS-NITRO" means the gun is locked by means of a block (I can't tell from that just what it means in terms of mechanics) and is made for smokeless powder. "JAGERS" means "hunter's"; "vertical" means just that and might refer to how the block works.

HEROLD is surely a name, but I don't know what EINGTR means. SCHUTZM. probably is an abbreviation for "Schutzmark" or trade mark.

WK 851 is probably the type of powder used for the proof testing; the St.M.G. indicates the rifle barrel was proved with a Stahlmantel Geschoss or steel jacket bullet weighing 13 grams.

Jim
 

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#6 ·
That is a beautiful gun and in a nice case.

Yes, the label is that of the steamship company. The gun travelled from Germany, probably to the U.S., as part of a passenger's luggage. I don't know what the "H" means. On the barrels, the crown/U is the definitive black powder proof, although the gun is also marked as being suitable for smokeless powder ("Nitro"). The crown/S is the proof for smooth bore barrels, the crown/W is a special mark for choked barrels. 12877 is the serial number.

The only other information I can give you is that the shotgun barrels are 12 gauge (which you probably already knew), but may be for the old 2 1/2" or 2 9/16" shells, not the modern 2 3/4".

Drillings are out of my line, but I think that gun and case would be worth quite a bit of money, possibly several thousand dollars. It is definitely a high class gun and was quite costly at the time. (The "huddled masses" didn't travel to America on steamers with leather gun cases in the luggage.)

Jim
 
#7 ·
I dont know its value, but I would assume you wouldnt have any problem selling it. It is very interesting. Thanks for sharing.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Merely as a point of reference: I have seen nicely made German and Austrian drillings with lots of engraving, inlay, etc. - very high end individualized pieces - selling in the $4K to $6K range depending upon the amount of embellishment. I have never seen a set like yours with all the kit that goes with it - value will be significant IMHO, perhaps as high as $10K+.
There seems to be a hard corp group of collectors in this area of PA.
 
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