As per the attached factory letter. Any ideas as to what “The Fair” might refer to?
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As per the attached factory letter. Any ideas as to what “The Fair” might refer to?
That seems like a fairly good guess. You might be right.
Any other suggestions?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fair_Store
God help me, I do so love the interweb.
I think I got lucky with “the fair” in quotation marks followed by <retail> on Safari. When I really care about finding something, I’ll do identical searches in Safari, Bing and Google.
Thought world fair, but added "store" to my search also. Past search history also effects new searches.
I wonder if custom orders were always processed through a local retailer. Maybe Savage didn’t accept custom orders from individuals for the same reasons modern companies don’t. They don’t want to undercut their distributors, and they don’t want the hassle of dealing with single orders.
My response wasn’t tied to this letter. You asked if Savage letters ever show shipping to an individual. I presume that an individual would only approach the factory for something that wasn’t available at their local shop.
In the earliest years you would find the names of buyers, but usually only if they were local to Utica or if it was special orders. Savage would redirect buyers for standard guns to retailers/distributors covering their area.
Later they did fewer and fewer sales even for custom guns. You'll find high end guns straight to buyers sometimes (P.J. Noel, etc), but many others to distributors.