What I call "British Domestic Quality"...i.e. good enough to be sold on the British home market. The "trade" quality pistols and other guns were seldom sold in Britain because there was practically no market for really cheap pistols and fowlers. I've put that down as a "traveling pistol" (i.e. intended to be carried in a coach) or maybe even an overcoat pistol. Plain, good quality pistols were commonly carried by retainers in the service of wealthy or aristocratic patrons or by persons of modest, but still what we would consider middle class, status. Almost no one traveled any distance or went out at night, unarmed in the 18th and early 19th century.
Quite a lot of pistols of this quality were sold in America... Also, about 99% of what are described as "trade" guns (i.e. intended for the fur trade) are nothing of the sort but are just cheap guns made to sell in the general market.
As louieparker has said, the locks with the K name engraved on them were the better ones. Generally, the name will be stamped on the cheap locks and engraved on the better ones although this is not an absolute rule. The K's didn't make the locks - they bought them in the lock-making towns in the B'ham area. I'll go a bit further and posit that the engraving of the name is so consistent that it looks as if they always came from the same supplier. I have a guess who that might have been but the only "proof" I have is an engraved lock with a noted lock maker's initials on the inside. I don't think that is enough to draw a conclusion from but if I found a dozen more, I'd be more comfortable suggesting the possibility.
