I was visiting a pawn shop with a friend of mine over the weekend and he lucked into one of the Beretta folding single-barrel shotguns in .410, what a jewel it is! 25" full choke barrel, nice European walnut with better than average checkering, rust blue and lightly engraved, steel buttplate and only weighs 4 pounds, 7 ozs. He only paid $150 for it and it was in 90% condition once we cleaned the dust off it and gave it a good cleaning.
These were once imported by Galef and later by Stoger and sold for about $60 in the 1960s. I haven't seen one here in years, but they were very common in Europe for city dwellers who wanted a light shotgun which will fold and fit into a standard Pullman suitcase to take on the train for a holiday in the country. I never had the sense to buy one when I was over there and they aren't imported or even made anymore.
In Europe a 16 ga. is most popular, but they exported them into the US in 12-ga., 20 ga. and .410. The 1966 Stoeger catalog describes a 28-ga. as well, but I've never seen one of those.
Does anybody else have one of these? - ESPECIALLY if you have one in 20-ga. you'd like to SELL! I want one.
The best looking, elegant little single barrel I've ever seen. Balance like a good fly rod and makes any US single barrel shotgun look like a clubby fencepost by comparison.