Fox Collectors

Regarding the finish on XE trigger guards, from my observations,early ones were blued then went to case colored in the late teens-early twenties.I have lately been seeing some twenties guns with blue. Was this customer choice or refinishing? I thought case coloring was standard procedure. Thanks, Bryan

I would expect incorrectly refinished.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a trigger guard for an XE that was case color hardened. I have seen a mix of forearm irons that are both case color hardened and/or blued in various grades, but not specifically sure about the XE versions.

All the heads down XE's and DE's of the same period are blued. I believe the trigger guards were changed to CC when the frames were rebated and the engraving was modified to the heads up fox design.

I once had about mint 200,xxx range XE 20 and guard was case colored. Bobby