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Old Advertisement on BSA Vintage forum site:
http://www.network54.com/Forum/67044...vert+from+1921
Large amount of these type of guns made. I just don't see a lot of them over here in US, maybe 6 or 7 in the last two years I have been collecting. Speculation it was the gun that the inventor of the first Crosman had as inspiration to drive him to try to better.
Award-winning Airgun Anorak
I don't think I've ever seen an estimate of the number exported to the US, but the BSAs definitely made it over the pond before WW1, a good few years before the first Crosman was produced. This article is a great example of the initial reaction...Originally Posted by 45flint
Vintage Airguns Gallery
..Above link posted with permission from Gareth W-B
In British slang an anorak is a person who has a very strong interest in niche subjects.
Surrey's Anglo Saxon
Only one reject exported, a .22 serial number S18133
My mother was flexible,but couldn't do Thursdays
Are you telling me that originally Pre war Beesa's wernt sold with missing and broken rear sight blades? Judging by what you see for sale today I thought it was a Standard(no pun intended)
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That's certainly my speculation.
The evidence and reasoning goes thus: The BSA was the only airgun generally available in the US that had rifling, so it was the only airgun, prior to the Crosman, that utilized the diablo pellet. All American produced airguns, prior to 1923, used either shot, slugs, or darts.
We know, or at least Hahn family legion has it that the inventor received an airgun from Europe, via his employer who traveled a bit in Europe. First speculation was that this would have been a Giffard pneumatic rifle and I even suggested it in my book on the Crosman Rifle. However, it became pretty clear to me that the imported gun was a .22 caliber BSA. The deciding factor for me was finding a "Universal Pellet" tin with one of the Crosman Rifle's inventor addresses on it! So, McLean was in the business of producing pellets before his airgun. What likely drove McLean to produce pellets himself was WWI and disruption of material and shipping resources in England.
Add to this is the history of the BSA and the Air Rifle riots in Birmingham. There were news articles even in the US about the problem when the local council tried to ban air rifles in pubs. Something like this would have been sure to catch the eye of McLeans employer and so procuring one of this airguns about which there was so much fuss being made... riots in the streets of Birmingham for the New BSA precision rifle!
Makes for a more interesting story, too. And, it relies on the most important innovation of the Crosman airgun: a rifled barrel + diablo pellet.
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