Fireworks For Sale in Shevington

Open any barrage on this site and somewhere in its details there is a shot count. It is the most quoted number in the whole catalogue and the least explained, so this page explains it.

What the number is

94 pieces in the range state a shot count, and it is simply how many times the piece fires. The spread is enormous: the smallest says 4 and the largest says 623, with the middle of the range sitting at 56. Two pieces that look alike in a photograph can be twenty shots apart, and that is the single biggest difference between them.

Grouped up, the range divides fairly evenly. 20 pieces fire fewer than 25 times, 23 fire between 25 and 49, 14 fire between 50 and 99, and 37 fire 100 or more. So the catalogue is not weighted towards the small end at all — the largest group is the biggest one.

What it does not tell you

Here is the part that catches people. A shot count says nothing about how long the piece takes to do it. A 100-shot barrage that empties itself in fifteen seconds and a 100-shot barrage that works through two minutes are the same number and completely different things to watch, and the number on its own cannot separate them.

It says nothing about what each shot looks like either. Twenty-five large bursts and two hundred small ones can end up at a similar total and feel nothing alike. A high count is a promise about quantity and nothing else.

How to use it anyway

It is still the most useful number on the page, for one reason: it is the only figure stated the same way across the whole catalogue, so it is the only one you can genuinely compare. Use it to sort, not to decide. Narrow to three or four pieces on the count and then ask about those three or four, because the question "which of these actually lasts longest" is one a person can answer in a sentence and a specification cannot.

That is the whole method, and it works as well from Shevington as from anywhere: read the counts to shorten the list, then get the list checked.