Quote Originally Posted by DT Fletcher View Post
When trying to nail down the history of air gun models (or any other manufactured good for that matter) you want to zero in on the paper. Get every version manual, advertisement, catalog, anything paper that has the subject gun in it. Adverts can be particularly helpful since that is what can help determine dates. If a Diana version is advertised in 1930 and another version doesn't show up in the catalogs until 1935: you've got the answer of who came first. The answers rarely come in one big box with a bow tied on top. The big picture is always made up of little things that bring the whole into focus. One of the hardest things for most folks is tossing away any preconceived ideas and bias and letting the facts tell the story instead of trying to make the facts fit the story you want.
I agree entirely that paperwork is the most reliable and informative means of mapping the history of an airgun.

Sadly, this group of pistols is remarkable for its lack of paperwork, and although we can date them pretty accurately, the subject of their manufacturing background presents something of a black hole for the researcher. In the UK these pistols were marketed as little more than toys and consequently they rarely appeared in gun catalogues, and when they did, no real clues were provided. Boxes carried no information and the guns within were never accompanied by manuals. Advertisements were few, and being confined largely to boys magazines were also uninformative. After at least 40 years of investigation by various researchers, including myself, no contemporary documentation relevant to the origins of these pistols has been unearthed. That is not to say that it never will, but in its absence all we can do is try to interpret what little data we have, make our speculations and keep an open mind.