Cornell - Standard Catalog of Browning Firearms

STANDARD CATALOG OF
BROWNING
FIREARMS

2008 Krause Publications Inc.,
a susidary of F+W Media Inc.

Published by

700 East state street lola, WI 54990-0001
715-455-2214 888-457-2873
www.gundigestbooks.com

Our toll-free number to place an order or obtain
a free catalog is (800) 258-0929.

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer
who may quote brief passages in a critical article or review to be printed
in a magazine or newspaper, or electronically transmitted on radio, television,
or the Internet.

Library of Congress Control Number: 200897701

ISBN-13: 978-0-89689-731-1
ISBN-10: 0-89689-731-1
eISBN: 978-1-44022-469-0

Designed by Elizabeth Krogwold
Edited by Dan Shideler

Printed in China

STANDARD CATALOG OF
BROWNING
FIREARMS

BY JOSEPH M. CORNELL
CMA, ASA, ISA

Other Gun Digest & Krause Titles

STANDARD CATALOG OF COLT FIREARMS

STANDARD CATALOG OF WINCHESTER FIREARMS

STANDARD CATALOG OF REMINGTON FIREARMS

STANDARD CATALOG OF MILITARY FIREARMS

STANDARD CATALOG OF SMITH & WESSON

STANDARD CATALOG OF FIREARMS

STANDARD CATALOG OF LUGER

GUN DIGEST

GUNS ILLUSTRATED

THE COMPLETE GUN OWNER

FIREARMS, FAKES AND REPRODUCTIONS

ANTIQUE FIREARMS ASSEMBLY/DISASSEMBLY

GUN DIGEST HANDBOOK OF COLLECTIBLE AMERICAN GUNS

THE GUN DIGEST BOOK OF RUGER PISTOLS AND REVOLVERS

OLD GUN SIGHTS & RIFLE SCOPES IDENTIFICATION & PRICE GUIDE

FLAYDERMANS GUIDE TO ANTIQUE
AMERICAN FIREARMS AND THEIR VALUES

DEDICATION

To my mother, Ava Vey Madden Cornell, who dedicated her life, her will and her all to my father and to her family; and to my father, F. R. Cornell, who was a true man of honor.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author is indebted to Browning North America and to Rock Island Auction of Moline, Illinois, for their cooperation in preparing this work. Any errors contained herein are mine, not theirs.

Browning and all registered and trademarked names are property of their respective owners.

ABOUT
THIS BOOK

J ohn Moses Browning cast a huge shadow over the firearms industry for well over as century, and in respect, still does. He is credited with having secured over 128 firearm patents, more than any other firearm designer. John Browning sold Winchester the rights to 44 guns, 34 of which were never produced. In addition to all these firearms, he produced guns for Colt, Stevens, Remington, and Fabrique Nationale of Belgium, among others, and many of his basic designs have been produced by innumerable manufacturers around the world.

He designed sporting weapons, self-defense weapons, target weapons, and military weapons. Many of his designs are among the most collected firearms today, and many, during their day, had profound effects on the world; Hermann Goering, head of Germanys Luftwaffe in World War II, said in a secret memo discovered after the war that if Germany had had the .50-caliber Browning machine gun, the Battle of Britain would have turned out differently. Browning was a very prolifi c, equal-opportunity weapons designer. Today, weapons he designed decades ago are still in use, and in demand, by all types of gun aficionados. The company that bears his name is known for selling some of the finest weapons being produced in the world today. Certain weapons bearing the Browning name, because of John Brownings legacy, or because of the quality inherently found in these guns, are very collectible and eagerly sought-after.

We are not writing this book about John Browning himself, but, rather about the company that bears his name. We shall also discuss Browning-designed weapons that bear the Fabrique Nationale (FN) name. We are including FN-manufactured weapons because many of these are considered to be weapons made for, and marketed by, Browning Arms Company, or are specifically collected by Browning collectors: the FN-made Auto-5, the Superposed shotguns, the .22 semi-automatic rifles, etc. Many of the weapons manufactured by FN and those manufactured by Browning Arms Company are considered by some collectors to have been made by the same company, and to a very large degree, they are correct. The business relationship between Browning Arms Company and FN, and their mutual fates, continues to be interwoven to this day, as many high-grade, custom-order weapons currently available through Browning Arms Company are manufactured in Belgian by Fabrique Nationale.

However, having said all that, we are not going to include in this book John Browning-designed weapons that bear the names, for example, of Winchester, Remington, Colt, Stevens, etc. Information for values on these weapons can be found in other fine Krause books including Standard Catalog ofFirearms, Standard Catalog of Winchester Firearms (which was written by the author of this book), Standard Catalog of Colt Firearms, Standard Catalogof Military Firearms, etc.

There are specific differences, within certain models manufactured by Browning that collectors recognize and differentiate between, e.g., weapons made in Belgium vs. weapons made in Japan. Beginning in 1965, Browning Arms Company began negotiating with Miroku of Japan for the manufacture of certain Browning weapons to take place at the Miroku factories. For collectors, whether the weapons carrying the Browning name are made at Miroku factories or other Japanese factories doesnt seem to matter. These weapons, as a class, are called Japanese Brownings. For collectors, however, there is a great deal of diff erence in value between Japanese-made Brownings and those Brownings manufactured at Fabrique Nationale. In the collector market of today, FN-manufactured Brownings are worth considerably more than Japanese-manufactured Brownings. This doesnt mean that Japanese-manufactured Brownings are of lesser quality than FN-manufactured Brownings, but for whatever reason, the market stigmatizes Japanese-manufactured guns and discriminates against them in terms of pricing. This all relates to their desirability and/or their collectibility. Consequently, youll find, in this book, information about all weapons distributed by Browning Arms Company, irrespective of their place of manufacture.

Because of the high prices commanded by FN-manufactured Brownings and older John Browning-designed Winchesters, Browning has reintroduced many of these older guns for todays market. These guns are manufactured in Japan and are marketed toward consumers hungry for older, collectible Brownings or Winchesters. However, the market values for contemporary-manufactured weapons are much different from values for the older original Browning-designed weapons. Some of these, as examples, are the Winchester model 42, the Winchester model 1886, the Winchester Model 12, etc. These guns were reintroduced for nostalgic purposes and to commemorate famous John Browning-designed weapons and because Browning Arms recognizes that there is an evergreen market for such arms. For the most part, these later Japanese-manufactured weapons were manufactured in two grades, the high-grade model and the field grade model. Field grade models are very similar to the standard Winchester-issued model of the past, while the high-grade models are engraved and often contain gold figures. While this complicates things, we will deal with the value issues regarding these reintroduced models at the appropriate place in this book. Interestingly enough, some of these reintroduced models have become what I referred to as semi-collectible, which means that people buy them with no intention of shooting them, but rather as an investment based on anticipated increases in value. As a matter of fact, some of them for example, some models of the recently-produced Model 1886 are already worth more than they were when they were originally manufactured. This sort of appreciation has led to the accumulation of this model, and other reintroduced models, for the purposes of investment, or as semi-collectibles.