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Hoo-boy. Twelve hundred bucks. “I remember when these sold for $25!” I couldn’t help saying so. The proprietor shrugged. “Wish I’d bought a bunch of ’em, too!” He understood. An old Krag carbine propped in a corner once got all the attention of a broom. Now, an unaltered specimen is a prize. None of the rifles in that secondhand rack had escaped damage or tinkering. I’d scrutinized all, from aged infantry arms to a bruised Savage 99 perforated for a side mount. The dozen or so shotguns had seen hard field use, with one exception—An early Ithaca 37 appeared factory-fresh. No tag. “How much?”
SELLING USED GUNS
“I’ll knock off some for cash.” He then quoted a figure six times as much as the 16-bore had cost new. I sighed, thanked him, and perused the pistols. A Python at two grand. A reblued S&W K38, a few 1911s, and Ruger singleactions.
Paying the Bills You may not have left that shop, as I did, without a closer look at those new striker-fired guns or the AR-15s and synthetic-stocked bolt rifles lining the wall. But if you’re selling, not shopping, your habits matter little. Customers pay your bills, and right now in many gun stores, traffic is migrating toward secondhand racks. “We get regular visits from old duffers,” a shop owner told me. “They shuffle past the new stuff, hoping they’re first to a recent trade-in we’ve underpriced.” While we talked, one of his regulars entered. Plaid shirt and roomy jeans. Fleshy middle. Silvered hair thin at the hem of a ball cap. He paused briefly at the Krag, lifting his chin to check the price through bifocals. “A hard sell,” nodded the
VINTAGE PHOTOS
help create a nostalGic atMosphere that can nudGe a custoMer to pull out his wallet.
proprietor. “Knows guns. But he’ll strip out the green if he thinks someone might otherwise beat him to a deal.” Later, in another shop, I watched a repeat of that scene. This time the customer was young, in his mid-30s. He wasted not a glance at a row of shiny new MSRs. Instead, we shared the secondhand rack. If visitors to your shop are spending less time browsing lately, they’re probably spending less. As automobile dealers know, people kept onsite, eyes and hands on product, are most apt to buy. You’ve no doubt completed 4473s for customers bent only on leaving with specific hardware, but such blessed sales may well diminish as the imperative to snap up modern sporting rifles has faded, if only temporarily. From what I see and hear, enthusiasts are now supplanting first-time buyers of bedside pistols and novice hunters sifting prices of entry-level long guns. Enthusiasts include an eclectic mix of people, some with narrow focus. You won’t lure them all. However broad and competitively priced your selection of firearms, it will only by chance draw a check from an advanced collector. But the history, scarcity, and obsolescence that make guns collectible enhance the value of more available, affordable models. These can suck in traffic to your shop when monochromatic ranks of the latest MSRs fail to draw a crowd. Remember wood? It once appeared on firearms. At a gun show decades ago, I bought a restocked Mauser with a lovely piece of French walnut because the owner had many rifles to sell and quoted a grad-student price. That .270 would bring with it the friendship of a man who, over many years, would teach me much about rifles. I bought a dozen more from him. He had no shop, but I was surely a customer. A single sale can spark a relationship that serves buyer and seller. It
INSIDE PHOTOS BY AUTHOR
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