A friend of mine said his father in law wants me to use any connections to help him find the value of a francotte shotgun. The serial number is just over 98,000 which seems to make it the lower of 3 grades that francotte made?? Seems to have been made in the 20's??

Can anyone give me help appraising it OR send me to someone who can help??

thanks for your help don kraky

I am fairly familiar with them, and own several, but as far as I know, the serial number does not indicate the grade of the gun in question. First of all, I assume it is a side by side. What gauge is it? What does it say on the barrel. Often has an importer's name and possibly the grade. How much engraving if any, does it have? Are the fences carved? etc.

They are excellent guns BTW, which are somewhat underappreciated in the market's pricing of them.

This gun was most likely imported by Abercrombie and Fitch. There are many grades of Francottes manufactured and imported. Some are boxlocks, some are sideplated boxlocks, some are sidelocks. There is no way to value your friend's gun without a great deal of additional information - it could be $500 or $5000.

C Man

Kraky,

From the serial numbers that you give, you are on the money in regards to date and grade. Made between 1922-1926 and was a bottom grade gun. This is taken from the serial number ranges on the gunshop.com website.

A lot more information would have to be given to even hazard a guess. Francottes seem to command good money.

To repeat, while I am not an expert on Francottes, I own several and have handled and looked at hundreds more. Francotte has always been mostly a custom shop and, while I wouldn't swear to it, it is EXTREMELY unlikely that they made only one grade of gun for 4 or 5 years. So the serial number is not a good indicator of the quality, one way or the other.

I'd have to go get one of mine to check the spelling, but Von Lengertke and Detmond, or something like that, was also a major importer of Francottes.

I think that the link should explain the serial number question.

http://gunshop.com/dgsnos2.htm