Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors .243

One and only one.

John T. Callahan,
Savage Arms Historian
53 Old Quarry Road
Westfield, MA 01085

New prices as of 12/1/2006:

Savage 1895's, 1899's and 99's are $30.00

Other Savages are $25.00.

Stevens are $20.00.

A.H. Fox Sterlingworths-$30.00.

Graded doubles are $40.00.

Send serial number and details of the item, allow 5-6 weeks for delivery.

Make payable to John T. Callahan

NOTE: If you state that you are a "24" member and list your "24" name you can purchase the Savage 1895's, 1899's and 99's letter for $25.00 each.

NOTE: JC has requested that you not send for more than 3 letters at a time. Big orders put him behind and cause other peoples requests to set so that they do not get answered in a timely manner. Thanks.

As I understand it the barrel that is currently on the gun does not have "Model-99F" stamped on the right hand side of the barrel.

What do you all make off that?

Don't smell right to me.

That's what we've seen on the other one though. Test fired at the factory fine as a single shot, but the 243 is too long to fit into the mag.

Thanks so much for the information.

So guys, if this proves to be a gun that was shipped from the factory, as is, with wrong barrel, is there any enhanced collectability?

Right now? I'd say probably not..

In the future? Very possibly might add some value.

First thing to do is see if Callahan will be nice enough to give you an idea of how many "oopses" Savage made like this. Then tack that information onto the rifle.

Kind of like the Spain 99C's.. everybody hated them because the quality sucked. Now folks are getting a bit more interested in having one in their collection.

i had some confusion on this as I thought the OP was saying that the letter states the gun left knowing it had a 250 rotor and a 243 barrel but a careful re-read says its a 250 receiver.

It would be intersting to compare a standard 250 in the 77xxxx range, this gun, and a 900,xxx 243 in terms of the internal parts.

I just can not fathom the factory engineers would not design a different rotor for the 243 even if in the early sized receiver and not at some point test to ensure it worked. Now maybe it only works with the certain shell/ bullet combination that was used at the factory and many modern loads have OAL that won't work, I could understand that. And I could understand it not working terribly well and being a little "tight" maybe but I really struggle to believe that the Company built multiples of this gun with out ever testing that the rotors would work, it just does not seem plausible.

I'd like to see why shells are not being accepted in the magazine. I have some guns that I routinely have a little trouble loading the magazine if I don't put the bullet in the magazine in a certain manner.

Even if true, I would have no desire to own it but then again I sold off a beautiful example of the Spain gun ... I could see where a big collector would be interested if the gun was in good condition and factory documented to have been built that way.

to me factory mistakes are something liks coin mint mistakes eventually they are worth more when documented,