My oldest brother(RIP) had a cherished 1952 Stevens(I think they merged with Savage Arms) 410 over/under that my dad had when he passed.How the oldest bro got it not sure but the old man bought it for another brother who didn't take up hunting like the rest of us.Years ago i had taken it to a county gun show to get appraised(before the internet).Here he found in research catalog a '52 410 side by side and it went for around 500.00 back then and the guy estimated the over/under easily was worth more as there were fewer of them made & he couldn't find a listing on it.Any way I also asked him about why the fire arms company switched from wood to plastic stocks/slide grips. Simple the Korean war was going on and the wood was going into military fire arms(preferred).So this simple quirk made them worth more even though they weren't any better - at least at that time
So years before my oldest brother passed away we had a handshake agreement if anything happened to him I would get the 410 o/u. well because he went in and out of consciousness his last few months I didn't even think of it. But his 2nd wife didn't get the message she gifted it to her son my brothers step son so not blood related 
. So this nice gun that I got my first game with had been passed around amongst the brothers ends up in the hands of someone it had no significance to.
We never said anything as my SIL she is a kind soul and went thru a lot with his death after almost 30 yrs of marraige. But it was an unfortunate outcome for my bro/SIL and the gun that had been in the family since dad bought it new
That sucks. And I know what it's like.
My grandfather had a lot of guns. And I mean, a LOT of guns. Most of mine, I inherited from him. I'm the only boy on this side of the family that cared to own them. My brother doesn't care and has never hunted for anything, ever, and my sister definitely doesn't care.
My grandfather had already listed out who was going to get which guns, but then briefly before he passed, he was not quite fully there mentally anymore, and he just started handing out the guns to whoever was there. So two of my cousins who are VERY liberal anti-gun guys, ended up taking a couple of the more interesting and more valuable ones. And they didn't actually want them so they just gave them away or something, I still can't get the truth out of them.
They were very sentimental to me since I'd been hunting and shooting with my granddad many times, the only one of 7 grandchildren who ever did. So I was pretty disappointed. If those guns had meant something to my cousins it wouldn't have bothered me, but if anything, they only felt distaste. They never even explained to me WHY they accepted them, if they had no desire to hold onto them.
Anyway, luckily my dad figured out what was happening and put a stop to it before the entire collection was lost. The anti-gun cousins only ended up with a couple or three, thankfully. I have all the rest.
