Ya done good!
Buying a "POLICE"-marked 870 is about the only easy way to be assured of getting a REAL 870, short of wading through serial number date charts to get an old one. The date codes on the barrel MIGHT help you, but since it's a switch-barrel shotgun. . .(shrug)?
Where Remington really pissed in my Cheerios with their production decisions. . .the last couple times I've renewed my armorer's certificate (classes put on by the LE division, or more recently, folks they contract with), they break the class into groups and give us deliberately doctored "problem" guns to diagnose and write down the list of defects on. While they do cover the gamut of things that can break or get out of whack on an 870, pretty much every one of them was doctored to contain at least one commercial market / Express - grade part, that either due to materials, spec, or functional incompatibility, makes the gun fail LE inspection and/or function check.
The message I receive is that Big Green Corporate decided "THIS is how we build it for a cop to bet their life on. . .and THIS is how we build it for the unwashed masses who don't know any better because we want to save 20 bucks building it, and will buy it because their dad or grand dad had one of our older good ones."
It still remains to be seen how things will shake out with the new owners, but if you want to be sure of a metal trigger guard, a milled extractor, beefy mag and lifter springs, and ability to install a magazine extension, you'd better buy the cop model. I have no idea if they even still make hunting length barrels with the spring detent in the retaining ring that interface with the dimples in the mag tube cap to hold it in place, or if we're stuck with the "plastic ratchet" Express system across the sporting barrel spectrum.
The above didn't push me totally to the point of "Knowledgeable Remington shooters choose Mossberg", but it's absolutely how I steer people now. While I do think the Mossy mechanism is superior, what swings it for me is that you can still take any 500/590 receiver and build it into any 500/590 configuration using either their cheaper or higher-end mil-spec levels of parts; they aren't making two totally different, largely incompatible shotguns and calling them both "870".
A ranty way for me to say you spent your $250 well, but as you can see, that comment takes some qualifying.
