Over-unders, why are they more expensive?

[White Horseradish]

Poking around gunshops and auction sites I noticed that a cheap single barrel is $60-70, a cheap SxS is $150, but a cheap OU is $300.

Now, maybe it's just that I haven't looked specifically for OU shotguns, but I was kinda wondering why this is. I can see a single being cheaper, what with less metal being used and less labor needed since it is unnecessary to attach barrels together. Logically, though, I just don't see why one style of double costs more than the other.

What am I missing?

 

[Quickdraw Limpsalot]

Neither SxS or O/U are cheap. $300 is about as low as I've ever seen any of them priced. Most are much, much more than that.

 

[hossdaniels]

+1 most decent ones cost atleast $1500 and some more than a house . but, i swear the birds just fall out of the sky when you get one. you can get a decent one for a grand if you look around. then again a $300 o/u will probably be ok if you dont shoot it much

 

[Onmilo]

Oh I don't know,
My Baikal IZH-27 has worked excellent for the three years I have owned and used it.
Fixed chokes, double triggers, nothing special but it works everytime while hunting and on the couple of occasions I shot it in Sporting Clays.
I paid about $300 for it and consider it one of my best buys.

To answer the original question, at those prices you aren't meaning new guns are you?
There are scadloads of older side by sides and unless they are cream of the early crop, the guns just don't bring that much in resale dollar value.

Over under guns have probably been around longer than side by sides in the history of firearms but they were never all that common until the mid to late 1970s.
Consequently there are far fewer O/U guns available on the used market, the ones that are there tend to be newer manufacture and tend to bring higher values.

If you look at new, modern Over under guns and side by sides you will find that the price of a good side by side is actually equivilent to the value of a new Over under of comparable quality.

 

[White Horseradish]

Well, yes, I probably should've mentioned this included used guns.

So, how come OUs are less common?

 

[Technosavant]

I don't know that I'd say that O/Us are less common than SxS shotguns nowadays. In the past the SxS seems to have been much more popular, but with the popularity of the O/U for clay games, I would expect that they probably sell more of them than the SxS.

 

[Dave McCracken]

"Regulating" the barrels so they both place the shot in the same place takes tight tolerances, expert workers and top materials.

Even the Name brands like Beretta don't get it right all the time.

Some cheap doubles do put the shots together. Many do not.

And some brands get hinky when one reports one of their products can't send both loads to the same Zip Code. Stoeger does not, they replaced a Coach gun whose left barrel was way out dere for a shooter I know.

Inexpensive doubles of either persuasion are a crapshoot when it comes to regulation.