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TOUGH TIMES DEMANDED TOUGH SALES TACTICS

Early Brownie ads were primarily aimed at the outdoorsman type of prospective buyer such as hunters, trappers, fishermen and such. As that dark decade of the 1920s inexorably moved toward the Great Crash of 1929 and resulting mass unemployment, many men were resorting to such outdoor vocations in order to feed their families. The initial price of the Brownie was $5. Six years later, probably due to Oscar’s improved production methods, Taylor Fur of New York was offering the Brownie for just $3.45 in their 1926 advertisements!

The Brownie ads state they would be shipped “postpaid” anywhere in the U.S.. The Brownie was delivered in a small, very plain, boxed unmarked in any manner. The boxes in my collection measure 4.75" X 3.5" X 1" deep, just big enough to accommodate the Brownie, wrapped in brown oiled paper, and accompanied by factory papers. Other writers have reported that these fragile boxes were produced in blue, red or black solid colors with no particular color being more common than any other. The specimens I have are solid black, and the only other two I’ve been told of were also black. The boxes, being composed of paper, have a much lesser degree of survivabilty than the guns they contained and are therefore more rare to find than the guns themselves. The current price of these guns in Very Good to Excellent condition, with their original box and papers, is quite high. One such specimen advertised nationally in a gun publication in 2007 for $799 was already sold when I inquired about it.