I'm getting confused by some of the various claims of Marlins recent quality. It sounds like the guns marked with the North Haven address are being regarded as being of higher quality than the more recent Remington factory guns. Then, the next guy will claim the opposite. How has Marlins quality been lately? Should I only look at the North Haven marked guns?

quality of his products about 6 months ago. When the plant moved most of the old hands retired. there are still a lot of hand fitted processes on a Marlin Lever Action. There is a learning curve to over come. From what I have seen and heard inn the last few months, they seem to have come out of that.

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Of the Troops & For the Troops

There is an article in this months Rifle Mag. about the Marlin move/quality problems.

I looked it up just for fun and discovered the full article appears in the "Sample of this Issue in PDF" at the Rifle magazine website.

The article is entitled The State Of Marlin Firearms; Brian Pearce wrote it for his column Mostly Long Guns (Rifle #260, January 2012).

Hope this helps.

based on what I saw, in terms of fit and finish. I understand the newer problems had been more serious.

Were I looking for another Marlin, I'd think twice about buying sight unseen if it were newer than 2005 or so. Just my opinion and probably overly dramatic.

I would say after they work through the problems with the move etc., problems that are to be expected they will be turning out excellent guns just like Remington has always done. Probably better than Marlin ever did themselves.

It kind of sounds like advertising hype to me, but that seems to be the content of magazines anyway. If they miss an opportunity to sell you something different with every paragraph, somebodys going to be flipping burgers somewhere by the end of the day.

I think 2005 would be way too limiting. I have owned Marlin's as late as 2009 that were flawless. Most of the general downturn came when Remington took over in 2010. At present it is still a crap shoot and sight unseen is risky. There have been reports lately of people finding good ones, but so far it's about 50/50 of good reports to bad. Of course people tend to report the bad far more than they report the good, since we expect qulity when paying the price wanted for things nowdays.

The real downer to all of this is the gun show ninjas have already started to try to rob you on the price of Marlin stamped guns. I found an eight year old Marlin 444 at the last show I attended and the guy wanted $695 for it. When I tried to trade him a guide gun in like condition he wanted $200 difference. I was willing to pay the guy some boot as that is expected when trading at a gun show. The guy didn't seem to know the guns, but was just trying to jump on the bandwagon and was going to hold out for some poor unsuspecting soul who was not up on the current situation. I'll let him carry it to a few more shows. It is not like there weren't thousands upon thousands made that are still sittin in the closet more than they are shot.

Is there a serial number guide for Marlin? I have a local dealer that has a handful of 1895s he's been sitting on for a while, including a 450, which has been dropped from the lineup.

The Marlin Owner's board has had considerable postings on this subject, including info from former employees. Have been too busy this last month or so to do much 'Neting around and keeping up with topics. However, that board may be worth some time reading should you wish more info.

Agreed, I had been looking for a stainless 1894 in .44 Mag for several years. I passed on three in a row at Bachman Pawn in Dallas. Two had such poor wood to metal fit that I didn't expect the stock would last long before it split. #3 had an extremely rough action and the sights weren't exactly at 12 o'clock. All this was well before Remington came into the picture.

I finally picked up a used one that was good to go, made in 2007.