I recently took my stepson Abel out to shoot shotguns, as he had never shot a shotgun at an aerial target before. We had fun, but the double barreled shotgun he was using was kind of heavy for him. I decided I’d be on the lookout for a nice 20 gauge single shot for his first shotgun.

I went to visit my buddy Ted in Temple, Texas and he and I made our usual pawn shop visits, looking for deals.

I saw a rack of shotguns in one pawn shop and saw a single barrel shotgun with a price tag that read $79.95 on it. I asked the lady if I could look at it.

She handed it to me and I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was an Iver Johnson Cycle Works, Champion 20 gauge shotgun. It had a couple of dings in the stock, but it was obvious that they had mis-priced the gun. But, since I never pay full price at a pawn shop, I told her, “I’d like to make you an offer. How about $70 out the door.”

She said, “That will be fine.” I told her to wrap it up.

It took a little while to fill out the yellow form, as this shotgun was made before shotguns had serial numbers on them. This one had four letters marked in a couple of places and that was it. I finally convinced them that those were the only identifiers there were.