After taking advice, reading quite a bit, and looking at the reviews in Gun Tests, I happened to find a shop in a nearby town that had a Wilson Combat Scattergun Technologies Border Patrol model with Armor-tuff. Cool! I bought it. The coating actually raised the price by $100, but I figured it would be worth it. It had the ghost ring sight, tritium front, high capacity, a sling I didn't need, and it fit my wife as well. Things were good until I got it out in the sunlight after I got home. Under the front sight, but visible all along the junction of the sight and barrel was rust. There was some actually on the front end of the sight. There was rust on the mag tube where the sling mount contacted it. I was very disappointed. In the lights of the gun store, the rust was not readily apparent and I made the mistake of not going over every surface with a flashlight before buying the gun. I called the shop and will be returning the gun in the morning.
Okay, so the gun is MOSTLY armor-tuff coated, but not all of it and the sites aren't coated, but blued. As far as the mag tube, apparently the coating had come off in the assembly process, I don't know.
To buy a supposed "top quality" type of gun, to pay full market price, to have a gun treated with a rust preventor, and then to find out that a new gun comes with rust is really a bummer.
I think the Remington 870 is a great way to go from all that I have learned so far, only I am going to have to go about getting one in a different manner.
Oh, and while I really like the idea of a bayonet mount (mentioned above), the whole idea of a shotgun was to avoid getting that close if at all possible...although I still have not ruled one out yet!