I recently got a 1902 Lyman. I found that almost any manufacturers rifle could be ordered directly from Lyman with their sights attached and sighted in with a guarantee of accuracy. They even say if the gun is found to not shoot well they would return it for another - that's sounds like the best way to get a gun if you want accuracy. I also acquired a 1902 Savage catalog this year so you can compare the prices of ordering from Savage with Lyman sights to ordering through Lyman. (How many have rifles that letter as shipping to Lyman?)



Savage prices -





Lyman prices (sight no's do not correspond, compare by descriptions)-





more Savage -



... so who's got a 'cylindrical mould' for paper patched bullets?

... so what if you ordered a Monarch grade through Lyman and they found it to not be accurate?
- possible Savage reaction - ...Hey Enoch! ...we need another Monarch... and make it FAST!

I noticed something in the 1902 catalog that I was not in other catalogs (or I just didn't notice it) - the pages with the pictures of engraved guns are heavier paper than the rest of the catalog, measuring with a dial caliper the pages are about .003" and .006" thick.

Neat stuff! Thanks, Gene.

Gene
Thats Neat Stuff, Tnx For Sharing
Steve

Nice, just real nice.

thanks,
dave

I wish you could get engraving at those prices. Wonder what it would translate in today's dollars.

No such thing as a Monarch in 1902.

Thanks for the pics, I love this kind of stuff!

"G" engraving was the highest grade in 1902.

Yes, I wasn't paying close enough attention to the dates! Since I mainly collect the 22's I very seldom look at catalogs before 1903....

But this did get my curiosity up and I was always going to look at the engraving specifications in the catalogs closer. I knew that the early catalogs did not use specific monikers for the different combinations of options on various high grade guns shown, but I had always thought that the highest grade before 1905 was just given the name Monarch by catalog #15 and still had 'G' engraving. Looking through the catalogs I find that even though the prices seem to be equivalent there is nothing specific about that being the case with the highest grades before & after 1905 - with the lower grades, yes. The letter designated grades of engraving were still used after specific combinations of options were give names. The 'G' grade never specified which named version it was used on, if any, but those below it all eventually did. The engraving pattern for the 'G' in 1902 does not match the pattern for the Monarch in 1905, 'G' engraving is still listed but there is no example of a pattern - is it possible when you ordered 'G' engraving it just designated the quality of the work without there being a standard design?

Here are the engraved guns pictured in the 1902 catalog -




The 1904 pocket catalog, is the first I have that has a named grade, the Leader, and it is the only catalog where the grade of checkering, 'B', and grade of engraving, 'B' are listed in the description.

Catalog #15 from 1905 is the first I have with the Monarch and all high grades guns pictured have some sort of name with some of the lettered grades of engraving being referenced to a named grade.



The 'G' engraving is eventually is dropped by catalog #62 and I never found a named grade associated with it, all the others eventually do by catalog #35.



Catalog #63 does not have engraving in it but I have the same listing as in catalog # 62 on one the price lists but not on the other in the two copies I have. The price lists are not dated but are from around 1925 - the confusing thing is the later of the two lists has the engraving - one of the catalogs has the 1914 on the price list, it does not list the engraving, the other list with the engraving has the Model 25 listed and the Model 1914 is counter stamped 'discontinued' in the catalog.

"G' engraving is still listed but there is no example of a pattern..."

It's shown on page 33, above.

Yes, in the 1902 and 1903 catalog before the use of 'Monarch' for a grade, I see I wasn't to clear on what I meant - an example of it is never shown in the 1905 & later catalogs that have the Monarch Grade pictured - that is what had me thinking that the grade of engraving on the Monarch was the 'G', now I don't know.

There are pics of each side of "G" engraving of a rifle that I photographed at the James D. Julia auction in March 2013 on page 39 of my book. With the higher grades there is some variation (maybe a lot of variation I haven't observed enough of them yet to be sure) in the background details. I hope to write another book in which I will go into great detail about Enoc Tue's engraving, checkering and stock carving. The Monarch engraving is entirely different than the "G". See pages 40 and 41. I've attached these photos. The first 2 are "G" grade, 3 and 4 are Monarch.




The Monarch grade rifle was also photographed at the James D. Julia auction.
David

Thanks David, that definitely proves my old original assumptions were wrong, it was always something I never felt very sure of.

***** OOPS! correction - see the next post**** I looked at 300xxx and got a date, not 30xxx! (please ignore most of the following!)

The 'G' grade you have pictured looks to have a 30.xxx serial, so about 1928? There does not seem to be any pictures of that engraving in the standard products catalogs at that time, so were there other catalogs or brochures to look at? It still appears that 'G' engraving was never used on a named grade listed in any catalogs based on the catalogs I have.

A 30.xxx rifle would be ~1903.

I see what you are saying. Perhaps the "G" engraving was changed from the early animal design to the later grape leaf version in 1905. There are no pictures of what the post-1904 "G" engraving looked like and the "G" engraved rifles I have seen have all been pre-1905's, so don't know.

I also noticed that the #57 catalog (1915) is the last year that the "G"(correction, shown in the 1916, #60), "Monarch" and carved stocks are listed. Both of these options had carved stocks and might be when King left the company.

I had access to a number of catalogs from 1900 to 1917 when I wrote the book. I didn't see any indication that "G" was continued after about 1904. I hope to learn a lot more about this in the future. David

David, I got your book out & looked at the pages on engraving, I do have to question some of it - "Rival Grade had the former Grade "E" engraving...", I have to question the use of the word "former", it still is listed up into the 20's as are the others including Grade "G".

My take on it is that in the catalogs the letters only refer to the engraving grade and all the letter grades of engraving up to "G" are still cataloged until 1922 when "G" is finally dropped. Quoting some of the description of the rifle pictured with Grade 'G'' checkering in the 1903 catalog - "The engraving shown in the above cut is Grade "G"." The rifle pictured was a combination of several special features, all listed and priced separately with a total shown at the bottom, grade "G" engraving was just one of the options shown. I think in 1903 you would have to order all five features, and not just the grade of engraving to get this combination. The last line in the description says "The above engraving and checkering can be placed upon any rifle, Model 1899, we manufacture."

In 1904 they started naming specific 'packaged' combinations of features and no longer listed & priced the features individually.

Comparing one example from the 1903 and 1905 catalogs, in 1903 the rifle with "E" engraving @ $40.00 has 5 other features listed, the features add up to a total of $81 (I use this example because engraving grades "C", "F" an "G" are not yet named in a package in 1905). In the 1905 catalog a similar combination of features with the addition of Circssian Walnut and a pistol grip is the "Rival" and has a price of $100. I look at the gun in the 1903 catalog as not being a grade "E", but just a gun with grade "E" engraving as one of a combination of features and in 1905 the "Rival" as just the grade of gun, but not the engraving, that's just one of the features and is still Grade "E".



Grades "C" and "F" engraving are later referenced as being included in a named grade of rifle but Grade "G" never seems to be.

The "G" engraving is listed through 1916, #60 catalog.

Interesting pricing:

....1914...1915...1916
"F"..$63...$70....$70
"G".$150...$270...$270

The Monarch is never priced.

...I think that's because "Monarch" was not considered a grade engraving, but a grade of rifle the had several special options of which a grade of engraving was only one feature.

I am basing that line of thought somewhat on the description in the 1904 catalog of the "Leader" Quality rifle, which is the first example I have of a high Grade rifle being refered to by a name, it states the the engraving was Grade "B", in later catalog the grade of engraving is not listed in the description of the rifle, but in the list of extra's all grades of engraving still are using letters and then are referenced back to a named grade of rifle - for an example, 'Grade B' engraving is always referenced as that pictured on the "Leader" -

Added, from the information I see in the catalogs the original letter grades for engraving were never dropped or renamed, the patterns were possibly changed slightly and a few more grades added. What I see is Savage 'building' a named rifle package around the various grades of engraving that included a number of other extra's. If you didn't want the Leader package but liked the engraving, it looks like you could order Grade B engraving along with different combination of extra's.

That would be great David!
I would like to know/see more special order features like;
- pistol grips, variations if any
- types of wood upgrades offered with examples
- a section on presentation rifles, Steunenberg, Schuetzen's, etc.

It will take a small army of history detectives to compile and distill the information. Even then there will disconnects between sales sheets, printed catalogs, what was recorded in ledgers and what was shipped.
Can't finish 'til ya start!

Pretty rifles!

I only had access to about 6 catalogs produced between 1900 and 1917 and some of them were the small versions. I don't remember any of them mentioning "G" engraving beyond 1904. Unfortunately the guy who provided them to me wanted them back.
As Rick said above this next book is going to be a daunting task.
I wrote the last book in a little under 2 years. This next one is going to take longer. Most of the special 1899's I know about are a long way from Wyoming which is going to further slow the process. Fortunately, I have additional photos of special features and several one off models of 1899's that were at the March 2013 Julia auction.
David

David, I was fortunate to get a very large collection of Savage catalogs at an auction several years ago, since then I have lucked on to all the ones I new of that were missing from 1902 up to the 1970's. As you probably have noticed I am not afraid to flatten them out on a scanner - let me know what you might need, Wyoming is not that far away by email.

The prices of the engraving posted above show all the ones where there ware changes from 1905 to 1924 (1924 is not shown, it was the same as 1922).

The last catalog I acquired was a 1904 pocket catalog that was missing the cover, a page of which is posted above. It took scans from 2 other rough & damaged copies & a lot of photo editing to put together the reprints for the Fest.

That's great Gene. I would like everything to do with engraving and special features at least before WWI. I think scanning all that is going to be a monumental task. I don't need them soon or all at once. I also don't need pages that are repetitions from earlier catalogs. Whatever and whenever you can work on it will be greatly appreciated.
Rick the plan is to cover all the things you suggested.
David

Here is a page from the 1904 pocket catalog (from the content describing the 1904 World's Fair I would say it was from late 1904) with a note at the bottom that I found very interesting -


I had never heard of a catalog like that before and even wonder if they really did issue one, the 1905 catalog came out shortly after this & it had extensive information on engraved guns so it would seem a special catalog then would not have been needed. .. so who's had a copy tucked away that they haven't told use about?