Then there were any number of Police, Riot, and Tactical guns for the polyester or balaclava wearing crowd.
#Remington 870 wingmaster serial age series
No matter what you call these guns, the Express in plain wood or synthetic stocks has been a solid seller in big box stores across the country for the past quarter century.īesides the luxurious Wingmaster and the plain vanilla Express, Remington has also made the 870 in an SPS series (with camouflage by Mossy Oak or Real Tree), a Marine Magnum (with electro-plated nickel metal finish), the Brushmaster shorty (satin finished wood and a 20-inch barrel), and the Competition Trap and Skeet series (with higher grade walnut stocks designed for reduced recoil.) These guns, billed as the Express series, are often heckled by Remington purists as budget guns-kind of Remington’s answer to Mossberg’s Maverick 88, itself a simplified Model 500. In 1987 a simplified version of the gun, typically with a matte parkarized finish, was introduced. Made from 1950-63, then 64-90 (as the Field Wingmaster) and then finally reintroduced in 2001, these are the Cadillacs of the 870 line. These guns had a hunting scene engraved into the side of the receiver along with prominent ‘Wingmaster’ roll marks. One thing that is fairly clear though is that perhaps the most treasured of these shotguns are the Wingmaster series. To add to this over the years the company has made several specialized runs set up to be sold exclusively through one distributor or another, further confusing the exact history of these guns. These guns have been made in literally so many dozens of variants it sometimes seems their variants have variants. In fact, more than 10-million of these guns have been made and they show no signs of stopping anytime soon. To put it in terms we can all relate to, there have been more 870 series shotguns produced than any other pump gun on the market. This was expensive for the time, being almost $700 in today’s money, but the public liked the guns. The 870 debuted in a standard grade in 1951 for a MSRP of $80.80 and a deluxe model for $12 more. Whereas many shotguns of the day, like the Stevens 520/620 had only a single slide arm, the 870 had two which added strength and reliability while also ending binding and twisting. The action worked to provide positive extraction of a spent shell, replacing it with a new round with each pump of the slide. This also easily explains the similarity in profile of the 8 series almost sixty years later, even with much different internals. Taking this receiver and replacing the long-recoil operated semi-auto action with a manually thrown slide action led to a strong and easy to produce shotgun. This tube-fed shotgun with side ejection and bottom loading was the building block of the new 870. The Model 11-48 replaced the old Browning Model 11 and did so with a smoothed out machined steel receiver with stamped internals. It was the age of the atom and no one wanted to hunt with their grandpa’s gun. In 1949, Remington was putting away its legacy guns and moving to a new generation of guns. 1951 advertisement showing a Remington side by side with the 11-48.