slumlord44 wrote on May 4^th, 2016 at 10:05pm:


On pages 420 - 422  of Boys' Rifles Grant published a table of side-plate rifles he had obtained data for.   Serial numbers 43 to 1257.  

I have been looking at favorites for about 18 months, mostly on-line ads, and have seen square cut frames in the 50,000 range.  Mine is 51,000 range.  Looks like the side plates were only 2,000 or so.  They apparently abandoned the serial number sequence and went to batch numbers like the 1875 Remington single actions, but with letters or figures.  One of mine has an ampersand, &, and I have seen another, but so far, no other figures.   
I strongly suspect that this rifle in question has a later barrel because the barrel address should be behind the sight on the top flat and have a "boxed" X at each end of the address, also the sights look like the later ones.  The early ones had a stepped breech stub of the barrel also.
Hope to send this stuff in to the journal soon.  PM me if you have any strange ones.
James

Just for reference - that boxed X comes and goes on Model 44s. I don't think it can be used as a dating reference.

Wouldn't you know it?  My expensive ammo arrives tomorrow, but last night while I was fondling the little Favorite the mainspring snapped!      
Fortunately Wisner's lists them.     
But they aren't open to take orders on Fridays. 

Yes these are rare boys favorite rifles with the sideplates even moreso. Here is my deluxe square corner action favorite boys rifle that probably a father got for his son. It was found on Orillia Ontario. It couldn't be the famed ladies favorite for that boy, so he paid extra for this one instead. It is serial numbered in the 27xxx range and has deluxe wood, swiss butt plate and target sights in .22 caliber. There was a nice period case for it, but I'm not sure it was for it.

Yes, here is the serial number. I gent before stated that possibly 50,000 of these were made and shipped out in one year or less. There was little in the boys rifle category at this time. Later it seemed to catch on and take off in sales. there were a lot of young fellow around in America and Canada, and they wanted a boy rifle as it was the thing to have then.
I remember going to James Grants house with some of my "unusual / odd ball" Stevens rifles that I found here in Southern Ontario. He examined them with me and we entered them into his next book on SS Rilfes.

Well, I was hypothesizing two years time, but maybe.  As you say the market wasn't awash in boys' rifles in 1894/5. And the '94 Favorite was a very well made product, sure to attract a lot of positive (I almost said favorable) comment.  Not to mention a rush to own the latest, (like iGadgets have been in the last few years).

One thing that still nags at me is that, from my survey of the Model 44 and its' 1894/5 predecessor, (the 107/108/109), that there are seemingly so few of the latter.  I have s/n 2023 in my collection, and the last that I've logged so far is 2629.  The first one with 1896 model numbering scheme is 3210, which suggests that only about 1000 of them were made in the same time period in which it seems that they may have made 50,000+ of the Favorite.   Maybe they just didn't have time to build many of the bigger one....?

What do you guys think this is about?

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Re-barrel? 
was there ever a 25-21 Favorite?
Did I miss a rare piece for $160?