Because it is still in production, the Remington 1100 may not actually be a collectible shooter at this very moment but since its days are numbered, those in .410 and 28 gauge are destined to be just that.

I absolutely love .410s and my L.C. Smith and an Iver Johnson Skeet-er in that caliber are two of the last guns I will ever turn loose. The fellow who owned Iver Johnson back in the 1930s was an avid skeet shooter so he built the Skeet-er in all the popular gauges, each perfectly scaled in size for its chambering. One in .410 will bring about as much as an L.C. Smith in the same caliber and a 28-gauge gun may be even more scarce, but the 12s and 20s, while also a bit scarce, will not break the bank.

The L.C. Smith in its larger gauges is still quite affordable, as is the Fox Sterlingworth. Since it is built on the smaller 20-gauge frame, a 16-gauge Fox is especially nice and a good one costs less than some of the better Spanish doubles being imported today. The Parker Trojan has its fans and rightfully so. Between the two, I prefer the Sterlingworth because I consider it more durable, but you know what they say about opinions.

Now for the over-unders. Everything considered (and this includes waterfowling and clay target shooting), I think the Remington Model 3200 is the best over-under shotgun ever built in America. The old Remington Model 32 was good but the Model 3200 is better in a number of ways, including its trigger. The price is still right too.

But as much as I like the Model 3200 and as much as I like American-built guns, I will have to admit the lighter weight of the old Browning Superposed makes it a better gun for upland hunting. My father paid $397.50 for his first one back in the 1960s and even today a good used one is still quite affordable.

For the money, I consider the Remington 3200 and Browning Superposed to be top guns among collectible shooters but the sleeper over-under of yesteryear is the Japanese-made Winchester Model 101. In 1966 I bought the first 20-gauge 101 to appear in the gun rack at Pepper's Feed & Seed in Easley, South Carolina, and it cost me the princely sum of $283.95. I still have it and even after digesting many thousands of rounds in both North and South America, that fine old gun has yet to break a single part.

The slide-action discussion will take a bit longer. Even though I am not a pumpgun man at heart, I do enjoy shooting several. The Winchester Model 97 deserves to be included here because it is one of the best-handling, smoothest-swinging shotguns ever produced for the workingman. Nobody ever accused it of being pretty, but it worked under conditions that caused other shotguns to choke and that alone was enough to make everybody want one. There was a time when good used 97s were a dime a dozen and while cowboy action shooters have driven up prices a bit, they are still quite reasonable when you consider what you get for your money.

There was a time when the Browning Superposed owned the over-under shotgun market and plenty of good used ones are still available at decent prices.

Based on sales numbers alone, the Remington Model 870 is the world's most successful slide-action shotgun and it is every bit as good as they say it is. But to me, the classic among Remington pumps is the Model 31. Once described in Remington advertisements as the gun with the ball-bearing action, it became even smoother after being shot a bit. The 31 was Remington's first bottom-ejecting pump gun and while it never became as popular among hunters as the Winchester model 12, it gave that gun a big run for its money on the trap and skeet fields of America.

Which brings me to what I consider to be the best of the best in pump guns. Actually, there are two of them. Winchester often described one as the Perfect Repeater while I have been known to describe the other as America's Sweetheart. I'm talking about the Model 12 and the Model 42.