PD Trade In Surprise!

[knucklehead211]

So I recently picked up my buddy's 870 police trade in, as I mentioned before. Anyways, while looking at many other members 870s (of course!), I noticed an oddity of sorts. Most people's 870s had lettering that went almost all the way to either side of the receivers ends. With the big aluminum plate for the sidesaddle that my buddy had installed, it covered most of the receiver, but still, there was about four inches with nothing on it. This got me curious, so I heated up the screws on the plate to soften the loctite and moved the plate aside. And found this:



Instead of it being a police magnum as I originally thought, it was a Wingmaster from a police department! If anything, that meant this gun had even more history than I imagined. I took down the serial number and fired off the number to Remington in an email. Then I looked up the barrel on this site. CA coordinated with a few different years: 06, 81, 54 and 32. And unlike magnums, the barrel said it would accept 2 3/4 shells - or SHORTER. So this meant this gun was probably from the 70's at least.

And then I got this email back from Remington.



Wow. This is one of the oldest things I've ever owned. And it definitely explains the upgrade with the cheap Choate pistol grip stock and the nicer chromed bolt. I'm surprised the finish has held up for so long!

Anyways, anyone else have any good stories?

[jermzy]

Thats awesome, I purchased a Trade in a week or so ago and found out it was made in the late 80s, You found an awesome piece of history. Any ideas what Department it belonged to?

[knucklehead211]

Thats awesome, I purchased a Trade in a week or so ago and found out it was made in the late 80s, You found an awesome piece of history. Any ideas what Department it belonged to?

Unfortunately - or fortunately, depending on how you look at it - either the PD or the store owner removed the inventory/property plate. You can actually see the leftover gunk in the first pic. This is nice because I may eventually be able to remove the gunk and polish this baby up, but it also makes it so I can't tell where it came from. I assume it was your standard donut eater's trunk gun though, considering the outdated-ness of it. Hopefully I can invest in it a bit more to get some refinishing done along the road. Speaking of, anyone know how to clean up some rust spots on bluing?

[Synchronizor]

Early on, there weren't differently-named 870 variants like Police, Express, and so on, you just had the 870 AP, -BC, -ADL, and so on, and any 870 was referred to as "the Wingmaster". The model intended for LE and civilian defense was the 20", low-cost, plain-jane 870R "Riot Grade".

[knucklehead211]

Early on, there weren't differently-named 870 variants like Police, Express, and so on, you just had the 870 AP, -BC, -ADL, and so on, and any 870 was referred to as "the Wingmaster". The model intended for LE and civilian defense was the 20", low-cost, plain-jane 870R "Riot Grade".

Thanks for the info, Synchronizor. I wonder if the dept picked this up and then next year put on a 20" riot barrel (would explain barrel code coinciding to '54, and receiver from '53). Or it could've been a civvy wingmaster that got pressed into service. But heck if I know! So many possibilities.

[Synchronizor]

From what I've seen, it's not unusual for components like bolts, barrels, and so on to get swapped around between 870s in the same armory. Everything's interchangeable, so there's really no reason for an armorer to worry too much about keeping all parts with their original receivers when working on several at once. Or maybe one gun had its barrel run over, and another had it's magazine tube cracked off, and the armorer put together one functional shotgun out of the two.