With so many different brands and models on the maket, finding a gun at the right price is tough. So, we’ve given Mike George the hard task of listing his top 20 new and used guns for under a grand
The Beretta Silver Pigeon is a popular first choice
Beretta Silver Pigeon
Country of origin: Italy
Price: £999 second-hand
For less than £1,000 you are going to get a rather old Silver Pigeon, but don’t worry. The older Berettas have a super reputation for reliability and the importers, GMK, keep every spare you could want. Many guns will have had nothing more than new firing pins and springs fitted during a long life of firing thousands of cartridges.
The gun illustrated is a fixed-choke game model which I reviewed for the magazine as a second-hand gun in 2008, but you will also find multichoke game guns and sporters of even earlier vintage on the second-hand racks. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, you may find a good 687 – that’s the gun the Silver Pigeon took over from.
One very small disappointment for me is that Beretta has never made a fixed-choke Silver Pigeon sporter, but that’s a personal preference and I acknowledge that Beretta has to follow market trends and, overall, there are far too many Silver Pigeon variations than I have space to list here.