O.F. Mossberg and Sons, commonly just known as Mossberg, is one of the last privately owned, family-owned legacy firearms companies. If you go to SHOT Show and look around, you’ll eventually stumble upon someone with the name Mossberg printed on their badge. It’s rare that any company remains family-owned for over a century. Mossberg is well known for their shotguns, specifically pump shotguns. What’s interesting is how they got there and how it ties to a gun known as the Mossberg 200K.
Mossberg’s Many Firsts
Mossberg has a lot of interesting firsts. Their first gun wasn’t even a handgun. It was a four-barrel .22LR double-action handgun. It was sold as a Trapper’s best friend and known as the Brownie. After that, they produced a pump-action repeating .22LR designed by Arthur Savage. Mossberg became well known for producing high-quality, affordable firearms.
They continued to expand and grow with some help from World War II contracts. In 1947, they released their first repeating shotgun, the bolt-action 183D. Bolt-action shotguns would be Mossberg’s bread and butter. They were quite popular in the post-World War I years. They were cheap to produce, and plenty of men had experience with bolt-action rifles.
In 1955, Mossberg released the Mossberg 200K, its first pump-action shotgun. Oddly enough, it’s not mentioned on Mossberg’s website. They skip from the 183D to the Palomino lever gun and leave out their first pump action. The 200K was only built for two years, in 1955 and 1956.
The 200K is most certainly an odd gun.
Dissecting the 200K
Keep in mind the images of typical bolt-action shotguns. Mossbergs were often fed by detachable two- or three-round magazines. They had long wooden handguards, and most of the receivers sat within the wood stock. They look much more like bolt-action rifles than shotguns.
The 200K keeps the same bolt action look but swaps the bolt for an external pump. It is fed from a short detachable magazine, just like the normal Mossberg bolt guns. The pump design is rather fascinating. It’s built over the stock to what I assume are internal action bars. The pump doesn’t look like any other pump design I’ve ever seen. The pump itself is made from steel and sits at the end of the handguard.
The 200K comes with a rear sight to match the small front bead. The gun has a tang safety, much like later Mossberg shotguns. However, this tang moved right to left and left to right rather than forward and backward.
In the 1950s, it was popular to shove various muzzle devices on shotguns. Various poly choke designs were quite popular. Every 200K I’ve seen across the net comes with a variable choke. These adjustable chokes allow the user to adjust between full, modified, and improved.
It seems like the 200K was only ever produced in 12 gauge and with three-round magazines. The magazine could be loaded without removal if the user chooses to do so.
What Happened to the 200K?
The design must not have been popular. By the 1950s, we had already established what a pump shotgun looked and felt like. This was some sort of crazy, off-the-wall design. Guns like the Model 12, the Ithaca 37, and the Remington 870 had shown what a pump shotgun should be. The somewhat odd and different design likely made the 200K not so popular.
There didn’t seem to be any benefits to the 200K’s design. It was different, but different doesn’t mean good. I doubt it was a bad gun, but I can see why the gun-buying public of the era gave it a meh. These days, they are rare but not all that valuable. It seems like they sell for less than 300 dollars.
We often associate rare with valuable, especially in the gun world. However, the 200K has no provenance, no advantage, and with that comes no real collectability. As a shotgun nerd, I most certainly want one, but I’m likely one of the few.
Mossberg learned their pump action lesson, and five years later, they released the Mossberg 500. The 500 followed the pattern but kept the budget part on full display. The rest, as they say, is history. The 200K was a minor speed bump on the way to Mossberg’s domination of the pump shotgun world.
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