serial #12612/20122, 43 Mauser, 26” octagon barrels with bright excellent bores. This is a lovely double hammer rifle with some lovely understated amenities, marked with Sauer’s name and trademarks on the underside of the barrels and barrel flats, with Julius Rösler’s retailer marking inlaid in gold on the top of the right and left barrels. The barrels retain about 98% original deep plum brown with perhaps a few small scattered spots of light oxidation here and there, most prevalently along the right barrel flat. There is a very nice hand-matted rib their full-length with some excellent quality scroll engraving on its rear and the breeches of the barrels. The frame, under lever, back action locks and triggerguard all show lovely original vibrant color case-hardening, muting in the grasping area of the triggerguard’s tang. All show the finest quality tight scroll and simple borderline engraving in perhaps 65% coverage. The hammers each have finely checkered rearward-curving spurs and the locks are rebounding and each trigger is a single set. The checkered round knob English walnut buttstock rates very fine with sharp checkering showing mullered borders and some very lovely grain figure in the area of the butt. It features a left side rounded shadowline cheekpiece and has the expected light dings and handling marks that come from the years, a very tiny flake at the rear of the top tang. The length of pull to the checkered horn buttplate is 13 1/2” and the arm exhibits perhaps 3/8” of cast-off. The splinter style forend is fully checkered and shows a couple little flakes here and there, the left-side uncheckered rib has chipped off the length of the top edge of the forend, but it is unobtrusive and certainly could be rectified. The rifle is sighted with a scant silver blade front sight in a shallow dovetail with nice little index marks and crosshatching matting, a bit of light scroll ahead of it at the muzzle. There is a single standing leaf, fire blued rear sight which has faded primarily to gray at this point, each of the firing pin bushings showing some strong pale fire blue as well; the tang has a hidden flip-up lollipop-style aperture sight as well which is very endearing. The rifle breaks with a Jones under lever and is tight on-face and appears to have seen very little, careful use with the years, and was clearly well-cared-for. As with all arms who’s caliber is unmarked, a competent gunsmith should determine the chambering before any thought is given to using the arm. A very lovely high-quality German double and a very fine state of preservation. (39100-877) {C&R} [Richard “Stretch” Kennedy Collection] (3000/5000)
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