Fox Collectors

I recently had the opportunity to examine a nice 16Ga A grade in the 302xxx range (1927 I think) that has 30" barrels. It also has a set of 28" barrels serial#ed to the gun but marked "Savage Arms Corporation Chicopee Falls Mass USA" The spare was engraved on the tang to match the original. I'm guessing it was sent back to Savage some time after 1930 to have a spare barrel set fit to it. Was this common practice ? and is there any way to tell @when it was done? Any ideas on the value of such a pair ? Barrels are 90% on the original 30", 95% on the newer 28" set. Both have excellent bores with one very small dent in the 30". Reveiver has only about 15% case colors left (Gun was hunted and shows honest wear but no abuse). Buttplate is replaced with a modern pad but it doesnt look like it was cut. some water damage just in front of the pad but very repairable.

I've owned a 1928-vintage, 32-inch Chromox Fluid Compressed Steel barrel, 12-gauge 3-inch, HE-Grade Super-Fox since 1963. Sometime during the 1930s it was up to Utica and fitted with a number 2 set of 28-inch Special Alloy -- Forged Steel barrels. Unfortunately there are no surviving records for such wotk. In my 46 years of looking at many Ansley H.Fox doubles that were back to one or another of the factories for a second set or replacement set of barrels. Such guns appear to me to be more common then guns that started life as multi-barrel sets.

If the gun in question has Chic Falls barrels, they were done between 1946 and 1960. After WW-II the Savage factory at Utica went to making washing machines to feed the post-war housing boom, and Savage consolidated their operations at the old Stevens factories at Chicopee Falls. By 1961 Savage/Stevens/Fox moved to a new factory at Westfield, Mass.

Thanks for the info Researcher. I got permission from the owner to take it out for birds this year. I cant wait !