Latest find

[Road King]

Attended a very large Gun Show in Phoenix AZ on Friday. Spent 7 hours walking the show talking to vendors, collectors and looking for a treasure. Well, I was getting tried, hadn't found anything exciting and decided to head home. Just ready to leave and was talking to a friend (vendor) and he said there was a guy at his table a couple hours ago with an old Marlin rifle. Oh well off I went on search for this guy. After going through 3 buildings looking for this guy and about to give up, I found this gentleman carrying an 1881 Marlin. I was pretty excited when I seen it and couldn't believe he had got through about 700 vendors and nobody had picked up on this rifle. Well we talked for about 20 minutes and closed the deal.
This Model 1881 was in .45 Govt. (.45-70), standard 28 inch octagon barrel, standard trigger and straight grip stock. What made this gun desirable to me was the serial number, 322. Yes #322! This rifle was the 322nd lever action repeating rifle that Marlin made. The rifle is in 100% original with all matching numbered parts. It is very tight and has great bore. The owner told me the rifle came out of Wyoming and that was all the history he had. To me as Marlin firearms collector this is a great historical find and addition to my collection.

[Regnier (gunrunner)]

Brian;

Thank you for posting this! This is just one more example to show that there was less than 300 of the early, rebated style receiver Model 1881's. My late friend, Robert Runge and I collected serial numbers for years on the rebated Model 1881. Historically, since the Brophy stated that there were about 600 produced, it has been a challenge to find the more accurate number of rebated receivers actually produced. We did narrow it down to under 300 with a couple of guns with numbers under 300.

[Road King]

Rick, I noticed that for an early rifle it did not have the rebated frame and wondered how close this serial number is to the actual transition. I guess Santa came early for me this year.

[marlinman93]

Nice find! I too was surprised it wasn't a rebated receiver, and didn't know there were others even lower than 300 that also weren't?

[oodmoff]

Awesome find!

[Eddie Southgate]

Sweet !! It's a good thing there's no plastic on it , it would have surely been snapped up right off if it had .

[Road King]

Sweet !! It's a good thing there's no plastic on it , it would have surely been snapped up right off if it had .

Yes getting harder and harder to find real guns.