Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: griz on August 28, 2020, 08:41:14 PM
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Anybody been to a gun show since things started opening back up? We have one this weekend and I would like to go even though I don't "need" anything. (I'll pause while you laugh at the notion that need has anything to do with it) I'm thinking the recent panic buying will cause the place to be packed, and that didn't appeal to me even before masks and social distancing became a thing. Any recent experience?
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The local one that's usually in June got cancelled. Supposedly there'll be one in September. So, we shall see. I'll go looking for primers, brass and bullets, without much hope of actually finding any.
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If you do find anything expect the prices to be sky high.
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I was at the Boise gun show last Sunday. It was actually kinda dead. The guy who ran the show got on the PA like 20 minutes after I got there and lectured the vendors that they had better not pack up and leave early (I guess some already had). As far as defensive guns, from what I saw, it was mostly $1000 and up handguns and ARs were running $2000-$4000, mostly custom builds from what I saw. Practically no ammo.
I almost bought a Ruger Wrangler as I have kinda been wanting one just for the halibut. The vendor selling them was asking $225. A quick phone check showed Sportsman's Warehouse was selling them all day long for $199. He wouldn't budge on his price, so I walked.
They were handing free masks out at the entrance, but I don't think I saw more than a dozen people wear one.
They're having another one in September and I might go to that one on Saturday to see if it's more lively.
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Effectively dead in the Buckeye state.
Even before the Kung Flu they weren't great for finding deals, ( the internet killed that long ago), but it was still fun to go walk around and see the guns.
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Sounds like they're not as busy as I feared. I might have to check it out tomorrow. Thanks guys.
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So as per my post above, I hit the Boise gun show again today. Whole different ball game. It took me almost 30 minutes just to get in the door, as the arena was limiting things to 300 people at a time.
Guns were still overpriced. Ruger 556s were $900. I looked at Ruger Wranglers again, and several guys had them for between $220-$230. As mentioned above, they are $199 at the big box stores. Maybe these guys think they can get more for the convenience of getting the gun right now, versus waiting ten days for the store to get one shipped. An exception I think was an FN Scar 16S that was $2600, which seemed a couple hundred under the going rate.
Ammo was pretty much all right around a buck a round. Some of the cheapest I saw was unknown I think metallic 5.56 at ~65 cents/round. Lots of reloading components (sans primers) but mostly for hunting cartridges, and also far from cheap. I saw some bagged .45 FMJ at $75/500, which was one of the better prices. One of the interesting things was an old lady selling tons of reloading dies. They were all used, but included multiples of popular calibers. All going for $15-$25/set.
I carried my Walther PPQ .40 with a for sale sign. $475 for the gun and four mags, or $525 if they wanted 300 rounds of American Eagle factory ammo to go with it ($120 at the normal times store price of ~40 cents/round). Not a single bite. What was infuriating was that a local pawnshop had a table set up, and they were selling a used one for $540, and I didn't see extra mags. And another guy had American Eagle .40 ammo that he was selling $90/100. Guess I wasn't approachable. :laugh:
Anyway, done with trying to sell a gun at this crappy gun show. I'm either going to do local Armslist, or else my gun shop said they could get me $450 store credit right now, and I'll use that for another can or something.
A big surprise was that one of the tables with these old timey collectors (you know the type), had a Colt Series 70 .45ACP satin nickel, asking price $2500. My eyes bugged out, because sitting in my safe is the exact same thing except in Commander size, that I bought from a buddy that needed money back in the 90s for $300. 'm going to talk to the guy who sold some of my milsurps for me, to see what he thinks. He hits me for 20%, but likely has better channels for a good auction price than I could ever get.
Anyways, gun show suck.
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I'm not a gun dealer. But I keep hearing people say that everyone is pretty much over .40S&W. Maybe that affected your chances?
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Local September show cancelled (https://gunshowtrader.com/gun-shows/pecatonica-marv-kraus-gun-show/). <sigh>
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I'm not a gun dealer. But I keep hearing people say that everyone is pretty much over .40S&W. Maybe that affected your chances?
It definitely has, and I'm one of the people who is over .40. :laugh:
I was just hoping the current gun run would have people interested in whatever is available. One interesting thing about the three times I've been to this show, is there don't seem to be a lot of people interested in defensive guns. I'm thinking I see more activity with hunting rifles and shotguns and old guns. Kinda the opposite of the half dozen gun stores I've visited here. Outside of Cabela's, all the other ones were very defensive arms focused with only smaller sections of hunting guns, levers, etc.