Nice gun, great photos! I’d be very surprised if the engraving is not factory or done as a side job by one of the factory engravers. I’ll dig out my engraving book tomorrow but it sure looks good to my untrained eye.

Mike

Pauline should be able to tell you if its factory or not and if so likely who engraved it. 

To me it certainly looks like a factory pattern. 

Zebulon said

Edward Vanderbeck said

That tag has a price of 787.00 dollars on it. It’s original to the gun

I noticed that. Would you mind telling us what you know about the provenance of the gun? 

I wasn’t sure whether that was the tag placed on it when you bought it in used condition or that it was original to the gun when new. One of the things I’m curious about is why, if the gun was not a stock item available in a retail store, it would have a price tag.  I’ve never ordered anything from Winchester’s Custom Shop nor do I have any idea what all would be in their shipment to the customer. I’ve assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that an invoice or packing list or copy of an original order would shipped in the box but retail tags would be absent. 

Some of our members with more experience could perhaps answer what the procedure was. Of course, if you know the gun’s history, you could say how it was. 

A very interesting piece.

The shotguns of this era would have likely been shipped in a cardboard box. Inside of them would be shipped a BLANK price tag. For the dealer or retailer to write in the price. Typically this would be done written by hand using pencil or pen. But also popular in this era and as far back as the 1890s was the use of the hand “stamp price marker”. The kind that rolls on a dial and can be adjusted to any price desired within some many numeral places. Also dealers could order / be supplied with extra labels/tags.

So if an individual special ordered through a retail outfit. Said retail outfit assuredly was entitled to their own mark-up on the final retail price. Winchester didn’t care if or what their dealers marked up from the suggested retail price. Just so long as they did sell them below the suggested price. Which is where they had issues with Sears & Roebuck making prices way too low. 

Now as far as being able to (Pre-1968 Gun Act) mail order the shotgun directly from the custom shop. I’m not exactly sure how they would of sent them from the factory to an individual.

So few examples exist today of the original packaging with most them out there being well crafted fakes. How often do you keep the box and instructions on the products you buy today?

Sincerely,

Maverick

Is there a marking or something to differentiate the two?

Rick Lindquist said
If one runs an inflation calculator on that 787.00 price? Way too much money for a fancy Winchester shotgun in the late 1950’s. For hecks sake a new Chevy sedan was about 2,500…

  

I don’t have much of a grip on what custom shop Winchesters cost in the late Fifties. Maybe it was the engraving or the elaborate checkering pattern that ran it up so high but Winchester was trying to discourage custom orders then. You really had to want it and wait for it.

However, I don’t think $800 in 1959 would have  been out of line for a Model 21 Deluxe (stocking to your specs but no cheekpiece or MC comb) plus  that AB checkering and some modest scroll.  My understanding of Custom Shop pricing was that it significantly exceeded what many top shelf custom makers were charging for the same work. I’d like to hear whether I’m wrong from somebody with evidence to the contrary. 

I do know my Dad paid $1500 in 1957 for a clean, used 1955 Chevrolet 2-door DelRay sedan, stick shift, six cylinder, no radio or A/C.  I think an optioned out new 1955 Belaire hardtop was closer to $3500 in 1955. 

Ed Vanderbeck said
My dad bought a broadway trap browning in 1957 said it was 350 dollars i have read the first 32 kreighoffs started at 600 dollars and went up in about that same time frame. 

  

Browning Superposed shotguns were a relative bargain in 1957, but only compared to a Winchester 21 or a Kreighoff.  That same Christmas my J. C. Higgins [Marlin with a Birch stock] bolt action single-shot set my Dad back twelve bucks for a brand new one. 

The best way to get a grip on the subject is to look at the median weekly wage for, say, skilled labor in the same year. I believe it was (very) roughly $91 USD, less taxes.

If true, that Superposed doesn’t look too cheap at over a month’s gross wages — $350 roughly.

In 2025, at the current median weekly wage of $1194 USD for skilled labor, if the same Superposed cost a month’s gross wages, its price would be $4600 USD.  Which is probably why Browning doesn’t catalog them anymore except on special order — for a lot more than $4600.

Of course, to estimate the effect on the maker’s profit, we’d need to assume a constant manufacturing and marketing cost-to-retail price ratio. 

Doing the same with the Winchester Model 63, much less a Model 52 Sporting Rifle, helps us realize how impossible their continued production was for any Division manager who valued a comfortable retirement. 

Ed Vanderbeck said
My dad said he joined the carpenters union in 1957 scale was 1.45 a hour said that was big money for the time

  

Ed, He was right.  The Texas Gulf Coast refineries paid more for skilled labor then, because carpenters, instrument men, boiler makers, welders, machinists and mechanics, electricians, were all in high postwar demand and they couldn’t get enough of them. Also, the OCAW was an aggressive union and the big oil companies preferred to pay and keep running three sets of hands. 

It was a bit later but in the Summer of 1962 I made “Common Labor” union scale of $2.75 an hour, working for an outside contractor. 

It’s why so many people moved to the Houston metro area, after Korea. 

But, even though my Dad was a machinist,  the idea of any Winchester branded .22 never entered his head. And he was a generous man to his children. He just thought those were above his pay grade — and certainly mine!

But the fact that you’ve known the seller for a long time and trust his knowledge is a very valuable asset, in this marketplace.

Like the street people say. “Know your dealer!”