The November edition of GunBroker.com’s Top Selling Report presented by GunGenius.com, showed just how popular a particular shotgun’s lineage can be. In this case, it’s what I call the Remington “Model 11 Family” of guns, composed of the Models 11, 11-48, 1100, and 11-87. Together, they took all of the top spots in the used semi-automatic shotgun category.
Model 11
If you think that the Remington Model 11 looks similar to the Auto-5 (or just A5) shotgun, you’re right – and for good reason. The Auto-5, which was designed by John Moses Browning, is the parent gun of the Model 11, but it almost never came to fruition. A dispute with Winchester over royalties left Browning without a manufacturer for the Auto-5 design. He initially went to Remington, but the company president died while Browning was waiting in the lobby waiting to meet with him.
Eventually, he took the design overseas where Fabrique Nationale made them and, in a bit of an ironic twist, Remington licensed the design from them as the Model 11. With that, Remington became the first company to offer a semi-automatic shotgun in the United States.
In the 42 years between 1905 and 1947, Remington made some 850,000 Model 11 semi-automatic shotguns.
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Model 11-48
So named because it was developed in 1948, the Model 11-48 was a slightly redesigned version of the older Model 11. The most visually noticeable difference between the Model 11 and the 11-48 was the shape of the receiver. The new shotgun no longer had the iconic humpback design, instead featuring the rounded rear that is seen on virtually all shotguns made today.
Part of the reason for the receiver shape change was because Remington utilized stamped steel parts in the 11-48 to help keep costs down. Some of the gun’s internal components were also made of stamped steel. The stamped parts not only kept cost down, it also kept weight down, with the 11-48 being considerably lighter than the Model 11.
The 11-48 entered production in 1949 and more than 455,000 were made until the last one came off the factory floor in 1968.
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Model 1100
In the 1950s, Remington introduced their first gas-operated shotgun under the Model 58 name. This new gun shared design elements with the recoil-operated 11-48, but products that are a first of their kind face an uphill battle. The gun was heavier, less reliable, and more expensive than the 11-48.
That’s not to say that the Model 58 didn’t have some good in it. As a result, Remington combined the positive aspects of the Model 58 with the tried and true 11-48 design and introduced the Model 1100 in 1963.
In just 20 years, the Model 1100 became the best-selling autoloader in US history in terms of dollar sales by 1983. Still in production today, more than 4,000,000 have been made.
Model 11-87
The newest iteration of the “Model 11 Family” was the 11-87, introduced in – yep, you guessed it – 1987. Like the Model 1100 before it, the 11-87 was also a gas-operated gun. The biggest difference was the 11-87’s ability to reliably cycle a wide variety of different loads without needing to change the barrel as was necessary on the 1100. This is because the 11-87 utilized a self-compensating gas system.
After 33 years in production, the Model 11-87 reached the end of the road when the Remington Outdoor Company went bankrupt in 2020. That left just the Model 1100 standing when production resumed the following year under the direction of the new RemArms company.
With well over 6,000,000 shotguns in the “Model 11 Family” circulating, it’s easy to see why they dominate the used market today.
Top Selling Guns Sold in November 2025
Source: gungenius.com/top-selling/
To learn more or shop for any of the guns listed, visit Gun Genius at www.gungenius.com/top-selling.
Editor’s note: In the report, guns are rated from one to five within each category, with the number one gun being the most popular that month. The numbers are color-coded to show any changes in the ranks from the previous report.
Black = Steady
Green = Up
Red = Down
Source: gungenius.com/top-selling/
To learn more or shop for any of the guns listed, visit Gun Genius at www.gungenius.com/top-selling.
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