No 99's at gun show this weekend but did find this #3C.

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Also, could not leave this Stevens #104 behind. Have no use for it but to nice to pass up.

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Don't blame you a bit. I don't think many would have passed either.

Steve

I sure hope you're not planning to put a screwdriver to that.

Rick, is the hole spacing on that Stevens sight 1 1/2" for Favorites and Ideals or shorter for the 425's?

1 1/2". What is the spacing on the 425? Didn't know it was different.

Nice!!

Ya 425's are .825" c-c.

NEAT! Does the model 3 look un-used, as in "NIB"?

Stevens 44 is 1 1/2" hole spacing- have one in my lap as we speak. Don't know for sure about 44 1/2 but would bet it's the same as the 44.

The bolt face looks unused. Only one ding in the stock and the guy I bought it from said he did it that morning setting up.

I think it was made 1935-1937.

I passed on both items Saturday. Couldn't get them off my mind so went back on Sunday and bought them. Now my mind is free to dream of the next big buy.

Got curious when I saw patent date on the sight, there were only two firearms related patents assigned on May 17, 1887 (if I remember right it was a Tuesday).

The patent is just for the eye piece on this sight, there is a different type elevation shown in the patent drawings. It was never assigned to Steven's and the inventor was George Washington Hadley -

patent/US362956

The text is poor through GOOGLE so many words are incorrectly spelled, they apparently used a text recognition program on old scans of the original - even the inventors last name is wrong, a scan of the original is on the USPO web site but their site is harder to use. Here it is on the USPO web site - uspto.gov/.piw?Docid=00362956 - GOOGLE give a link to this on the right side of their screen.

I could not find anything on the rest of the sight, there is a patent from 1920 for either an improvement of, or a very similar sight, that was assigned to Steven's - patent/US1338183 This seems very late for that type of sight, a USPO screen will load and you then have to click images.

Rick, are there any other dates stamped on the sight?

Trivia - May 17, 1887, it was a Tuesday and there were 2 firearms related patents issued that day - May 17, 1887 ...out of a total of 439 patents - May 17, 1887 total ...out of 21,442 issued that year (includes 99 reissues) - Patents issued for all of 1887 ...of that total, 125 were firearms related - Firearms patents issued in 1887