There is such a wide price range on O/U shotguns. The sky is the limit…or you can get a Stoeger for $350. I know a $2500 O/U is a nicer gun, but what makes it worth that much more?
There is no way I can justify an expensive one. Just curious.
If a guy was just going to shoot trap a few times a year and hunt upland birds, I see no reason to purchase a high end gun. The only advantage I see in buying a high end O/U is parts availability and trips to the gunsmith will be less as the gun gets older. I shoot my Stoeger and Baikal just as well as my Browning. I suggest getting a gun that fits you and is in your price range. Pull up as many guns as you can. There is nothing worse than owning a shotgun that turns your cheek black and blue every time you pull the trigger…
Some of it simply comes down to name recognition, i.e. NIKE etc… Then the next thing is fit and finish. The quality of materials used is next.
I’d love to own a nice gun, but I’ve come to accept the fact I don’t take care of my guns like they probably deserve. They are tools for me and the old rusty 870 probably kills as many birds as any high end gun on the market.
Now, there is something to be said about carrying a nice firearm and the admiration men give our guns.
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There is such a wide price range on O/U shotguns. The sky is the limit…or you can get a Stoeger for $350. I know a $2500 O/U is a nicer gun, but what makes it worth that much more?
There is no way I can justify an expensive one. Just curious.
Some of the cost difference is simply in better or higher grade materials. I have a Browning 625 Superlight, but compared to the standard model, the Superlight is made with more lightweight alloys and about $1000 of the added price is purely attributed to a 2x upgrade in the stock.
My 625 weighs 5 pounds 3 1/2 ounces exactly. And that’s on an actual scale, that isn’t just Browning’s claimed weight. That is extremely light, and although there may be lower-priced doubles out there somewhere that can equal that, I’m not aware of any that can come even close.
Part of it is also functional. While it might seem counter-intuitive, an over/under or side-by-side is, mechanically speaking, every bit as intricate as an autoloader or pump. It takes a lot to engineer functions like selective ejectors, single trigger, and barrel selection, but it takes even more to design and build functions that will work flawlessly over many, many years AND that won’t add negative qualities like extra bulk or weight.
Certainly many lower priced doubles have had single selective triggers. And this absolutely has been a major fall-down point with some brands because while they may have had this function, it didn’t work for beans.
The elegance with which the features manifest themselves is the major difference between the low and higher priced models.
I don’t have objective proof of this, but it seems to me that I have seen and heard of more people having problems with low-priced doubles than I’ve seen with any other action category. This is one area where I think I would advise you to either go big or stay home. IMO, you would be far better served to buy a $400 pump than you would to buy a $400 double.
Grouse
I will agree with Kooty on name…. when I bought my CZ O/U, I paid just over $550…. that was about 5 years ago, when they first started pushing their firearms in the USA. Now they have the same gun… and right above the gun, spokesperson Tom Knapps picture 
.. now the gun is $926… 
I am very happy with my gun. I am a natural with the gun. Shooting clays at most once a year, I would say I went from being a honest 50% clay shooter, to around 75% overnight, compared to my old 870 
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