All other SO over-unders—which start with the SO-2 (I don’t know why there isn’t an SO-1!) and run through the SO-3 and SO-4—are equally the well-built and offer the same functional features as does the SO-5. The essential differences are in the embellishments and visual aspects of one grade against the other—the wood quality, the engraving, the checkering and so on.
What does this Iuxuriousness cost? Well, the SO-5 guns carry a catalog price of $1750, to which you’d and something for the options mentioned Extra barrels ordered with the SO-5are $460. The SO-2 grade lists for #950, extra barrels $365, while the SO-4 and SO-4 guns are in between. Whatever grade, a fair amount of money is involved,no question about that. Still, just ablut everyone of you reading this owns an automobile in one price class or another, and in a year or three you’ll be buying another. You’ll spend anywhere from a minimum of $2000 or so up to $5000 and more (and these figures might rise to $3000-$6000 if inflation keeps up, as it looks like doing). yet in a few short years most of those new cars will be ready for the junkyard. In the interim, more thousands of dollars will have been spent on fuel and care, heavy insurance charges, tires and the like.
Now, that doesn’t happen when you buy—invest is a better and truer term—a really first class shotgun, believe me. Let’s say you put $1500 or so into a fine smoothbore, and that you give it decent care over the next 5 or 10 years. At the end of that time, say 10 years or so, it’s an absolute verity that your top grade double gun is going to be worth more than you paid for it, assuming that the dollar is going to continue to lose value—which is just what it has been doing for 150 years or more, notwithstanding the temporary reversals of the trend brought about by such catastrophes as our Great Depression of the 1930s.
Don’t you wish—those of you who were young men or a bit beyond that in the late 1930's—that you had bought a Parker VHE or a Model 21 Winchester when both could be had at a full retail price of about $150?
That price bought either of these fine—if relatively plain—guns with fancy wood, beavertail fore-end, single selective triggers, auto ejectors and ventilated ribs—plus a quality of workmanship and detailing hard to come by in American firearms to day.
I know! That $150 or so wasn’t burning a hole in many pockets in 1938-1940, but I don’t imagine that a spare $1000-$1800 is much more readily to hand today. Nevertheless, these are the money machanics I’m pointing up; how to solve ‘ em is where you come in.
Gee, I wish I’d had sense enough in 1939 to buy one of those Parkers at $150, or one of their GHE or DHE grades at…
Two brand new Berettas are on the Garcia list for 1970. These, the SO-6 and the SO-7, are side-by-side doubles that equal the top grade So-4 and SO-5 over-unders in quality and lavishness of treatment generally, in the variety of chokes and barrel lengths offered, and in the optional constructional details and dimensions to be had on special order. We’ve not as familiar with these latest Berettas as we’d like to be, but Berettas in this quality and price bracket ($1360-$1820) leave little to be desired and nothing to criticeze.