Byron,
Because the Cherokee 36 was only offered for one year. either as a complete rifle or as an accessory barrel for the previous years 32's & 45's, not a lot of the 36 barrels would have been made. Nobody knows how many were made though, not even TC. I imagine they were still available for a while though until all of them had been sold.
I've seen very few Cherokee 36's come up for sale the last 20 years, and the barrels alone are even much rarer (only saw a couple of barrels being sold, w-a-y back). Last rifle was probably 3-4 years ago. I think that last rifle was listed at $650, but the stock had been altered/refinished and the barrel refinished bright, suggesting it had been beat up pretty good and was probably a rust bucket. Made it undesirable to anybody who didn't want it just for a shooter. It was relisted several times but I never saw that it had sold, and the seller wouldn't budge on the price. One before it was around $500 I think, but it had been well used and had some issues. That was probably 9-10 years ago. Obviously there could have been others for sale I didn't see or hear of, but you can count on a fairly stiff price of you find a 36 in good condition.
Was the same story with the earliest CVA Squirrel's (c. mid 80's) BTW. There were 32 Squirrels all over the place for very reasonable prices about 10 years ago. I got a great deal and paid something like $100 for one that was like NIB, but the 36's were rare and commanded a much higher price. Found one of them too like NIB about the same time, but it cost me two and a half times what the 32 had. Fit and finish on them was not even close to a TC, but they were excellent shooters.
HTH,
Larry
