I would agree with all of that. I just see constantly people saying that the older Marlins were something they weren’t. Like you said, they were an affordable blue collar deer gun.
As far as the prices, yes they’re much higher than they used to be, but what isn’t? Used to be able to buy a stripped down work truck for cheap too, now they’re $50k.
I doubt we ever see a Marlin at anything approaching old time prices again. But I also wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Ruger produce rifles of the same or better quality than the JM guns.
