While she was in a store looking around I wandered across the street to a small place I noted at the last
moment. A gun shop. It was small with bars on the doors and windows and at least one security camera.
Going inside the salesman was working with a customer so I just sort of eyeballed the place. I was
thinking ( wishing maybe?) there might be one of those "miracle" models 8's people sometimes post on here about.
You know, an "E" or "F" grade rifle for fifty bucks or so.
No luck on this day. The conversation between the customer and sales guy caught my attention.
On the counter I was to learn was a really nice looking 1873 Winchester 44-40WCF manufactured in 1893.
It had the octagon barrell and looked realy clean for its age. This was the first one I'd ever (seen being a newbie.)
The store wanted about three grand for the gun. What caught my attention was this letter the salesman had.
It was from Winchester, the factory, and had the dates the gun was made and where it had been shipped. I thought
that was pretty interesting.
Seeing my bride through the window, across the street, looking for me, I had to leave. Didn't hear how the sale turned out.
That night after I got home, I went on line and read up on the 44-40. The "gun that won the west" it was called.
They made a heck of a lot of them. Factory ammo was still available, or you can load your own. Interesting.
From there I went to a couple of gun auction sights, GUNBROKER and so forth.
I found nearly fifty examples of that rifle for sale. Prices varied from 1,200 dollars or so up to one that
the seller asked $ 23,000. Interesting to me was perhaps a third of those guns, maybe a few more, had
lots of individual history with them. Many of them had those letters from Winchester that I'd seen earlier that day.
Kind of like a "birth certificate". A large number also had letters from Winchester giving details of maintenace and repair history whenever the gun was returned to the factory. Moreover a number of these rifles had notorized letters and in some case's photos showing the rifle with original owners and documented history up to the present time.
I was amazed at the amount of individual history provided with some of these rifles.
All this got me to wondering why don't we see this in the model 8 community? For the most part it seems (to me)
we buy guns from dealers or at gun shows or pawn shops. Theres almost never any history with our model 8's
Its like their all "orphans." The only exceptions seem to be rifles passed down in familys.
I just purchased a model 8 recently that was manfactured in 1930. It looks like its never been fired. My local gun shop
thinks the blueing is Original ( as near as he can tell)
I got it from a dealer, a nice enough fellow, but with absolutely no history. Whats up with that? Is this just the nature of our gun community? Does Remington provide any of those letters such as I saw with Winchester 44-40?
As a "newbie" collecter/ shooter thought I'd ask. Perhaps some of the old hands can comment on this.
One thing I've learned, the Winchester 44-40CWF is a sweet looking rifle. I was thinking earlier about the
Marlin 336 but if I decide to buy another shooter outside of the model 8 family, might want to take another
look at the Winchester. That octagon barrel is pretty nice.!
Probably even get Frank Hamer or Billy or Jesse or ... to come back be photographed with it! 
