I don't get GB !

When you have an international audience then some things are going to sell silly high. To you it is a used cheapo Glock 17 but to somebody else it is the gun Dad carried or something like that.

Most are over-priced. It's a function of them only charging a fee when an item sells. There's no downside to listing a lot of items for a high price and hoping one or two sell.

Good deals are out there though. I recently bought a Gen4 G35 with night sights and 4 mags for $445, shipped. I've only bought a couple guns there, but I always check!

The problem I see with buying guns is that people think that their gun is worth more than other guns of the same make and caliber. They tell you how well it's been cared for, etc. This seems to translate over to Gunbroker.

evan price said:

Search by lowest price first and shop that way. There is always someone with an inflated idea of an item's worth...ignore them.

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Yep. Typically what I do is filter down to used items (because frankly on a new gun Grabagun or Buds is going to be have better prices), and then sort by ascending price and then just skip over everything with a reserve or a current price less than ~$10 (a lot of those are items that haven't had a bid yet - too much for me to wade through and generally if they're at all decent they'll have jumped up higher by the next time I look).

Scan across the listings and see what's out there. Once I get to a price level that I'm not going to likely spend (which usually for me is anything over $500) I just stop looking.

Occasionally you can find a pretty good deal. I've seen a number of XD's lately go for under $300 - I've seen one end at around $250 with no bids (and it looked fine). You just have to be willing to put in some time.

Now, the other side of that coin is that people will say that your time is also valuable, so if you're going to spend hours every week just to occasionally save $100 or so then it's not worth it. That's a valid viewpoint, but I personally kind of enjoy the whole process (as to many other people - hence the prevalence of "window shopping"), so it doesn't really bother me to be on the site a lot.

I've spent many hours on GB looking for a deal on many different guns over the last 10 years. I always find a good one, eventually. You just need to be patient, don't get "hooked" on one particular gun, unless it's really rare, and only bid what you want to pay. For some odd reason, when I don't really care about winning an auction, I almost always do. Set your alarm for the end of an auction of a gun you really care about, and you might be surprised how low the gun goes for. I've made some great buys a few times, and never paid more than I expected to spend.

Online auctions...

There can certainly be good deals to be had on online auctions so long as you don't necessarily have to have a particular item by a particular date. I've had only limited experience on Gunbroker but I've run across a number of auctions on Ebay which I believed to involve shill bidders.

It wouldn't be terribly difficult, for example, to have your friend bid on your item and, if won by accident, not have to pay for the item or pay online and then get the money back under the table. Unless someone is really stupid or lazy, shill bidding is very difficult to prove with usually very little in the way of consequences. And someone can always just pop back up under another screen name if need be..

I agree about the shill bidding. One of the first things I ever bought on an online auction was my first laptop. There were 14 available, and when I went to bed with about an hour to go. I had given up winning it, as I was in 13th place, and falling. I was shocked when I woke up and saw the email telling me I had won one of them, and was in 10th place. Huh? It looked like a bunch of the bids were pulled at the end. I would guess it was just a way to get the price up. It was a great laptop, but even though I had stopped bidding, I paid too much for it.

But a couple of years ago on GB, I sold a gun for almost twice what I paid for it, two guys kept bidding on it, and I was very happy by the time it was over.

hemiram said:

... but even though I had stopped bidding, I paid too much for it. ...

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<chuckle> I almost learned the hard way to never allow myself to get sucked into a bidding competition.

Now if I see something that I might like to have on Gunbroker, I setup a shortcut on my desktop with a name that includes the item & auction end time.

I go to the auction 15-20 minutes prior to its listed ending time and, if the price has not been inflated beyond what I am willing to pay, I will place my ONE bid and walk away.

Wanderling said:

Thank you all for the lecture in economics.
<snip>

I just don't get GB's model.. seems it's in their best interest to discourage such behavior since they make money on volume and a large number of grossly overpriced items serves to distress sales volume. People would be much more likely to buy something on GB if a reasonable deal - not even a steal - was easier to find.

</snip>

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I don't see that GB has a model, they are just an auction site ... It's stupid sellers!

I look at GB as a big gun-show. You can't tell me you've been to a gun show where everything is reasonable!

I buy guns you can't order from Buds or other big retailers; like my Valmet tube-folder, it took nearly a year before I found one I wanted at a price that was agreeable to me ... Also some newer complete weapons like my KAC SR-15 Mod0 & Ares Defense belt fed upper which I bought the "lite" version from one seller, then got the 12" heavy MG barrel and F/A bolt carrier from another and have less invested than some sellers want for just an upper ... and I have 2 barrels & 2 bolt carriers!

... I also use GB to compare to local prices, I recently bought a Spikes "Jack" receiver locally because the receiver + tax was less than I'd pay with shipping & transfer even though both sellers had I the item at the same price ... same with a PAP M92 I'd been sorta looking for.

Just like at a gun show, you have to know a deal when you see it.

One thing I really like is you can save a search and get an email when new items that meet your search criteria ... Then just sit back and wait.

GB sells a LOT of guns and there's nothing wrong with their auction model.

Are there a lot of guns on there that are priced insanely -- perhaps 50% higher than other sellers are offering the same exact gun? Of course. But those guns don't get in the way of finding what you're looking for unless you don't know how to use the site and the search feature.

It's simple to ignore those items that you think are "overpriced". It takes about 3 clicks: Search; narrow your search; sort by price. Then stop scrolling when you hit your cut-off point.

Or if you want to get more complex, you can include price limits in your search.

It'd be absurd for GB to try to regulate the asking price for guns or other items on the site. Instead, they give you the tools to control what gets presented to you.

I6turbo said:

...
Are there a lot of guns on there that are priced insanely ... Of course. But those guns don't get in the way of finding what you're looking for unless you don't know how to use the site and the search feature.

It's simple to ignore those items that you think are "overpriced". It takes about 3 clicks: Search; narrow your search; sort by price. Then stop scrolling when you hit your cut-off point. ...

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Exactly!

I6turbo said:

It takes about 3 clicks: Search; narrow your search; sort by price.

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Word of advice; the search function is only as good as the data that was input by the seller. Did you know that S&W made an automatic Model 19? I didn't, but there's one on there and it looks a LOT like a 1911. One example of dozens I've encountered while trying to 'search' for any specific model.

So if you want a thorough search, you'll be clicking a lot more than three times.

Oh, and a word of advice to sellers; the word "rare" in your ad for some old gun doesn't make it more desirable. In almost all cases it means the manufacturer saw it as a loser and stopped making it.

Word of advice; the search function is only as good as the data that was input by the seller. Did you know that S&W made an automatic Model 19? I didn't, but there's one on there and it looks a LOT like a 1911. One example of dozens I've encountered while trying to 'search' for any specific model.

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I've basically stolen a couple guns that were typo'd listed incorrectly..

Stick to slickguns.com, I have been doing the pricing 'thing" for as long as it has been around online. And "Buds" was the place 10 years ago, but now it's slickguns, because you can see whoever is selling that gun, which can be 2 dozen stores most of which are cheaper on that gun for any of a hundred reasons. For instance there is their deal of the week, or day. Some sell out in minutes if they are really hot. PPQ's are 5-550, a Taurus 357-$288, they have smoking deals on every gun if you are willing to wait a week sometimes a day. It will pop up. I mean everything from The Heizenger 223 Derringer, to a Thompson sub gun, suppressors NFA stuff Ammo, You get the drift. Any store can post their specials, or any person who saw a deal can put it up.

Mainsail said:

Word of advice; the search function is only as good as the data that was input by the seller.

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That's also where your own search terms come into play as well as narrowing your search. When you narrow your search to Revolvers, it eliminates the Smith 19 semi-auto that you mentioned. Of course a terribly written ad may slip through, but 95% of the time you'll be good.

Yes it can be right there and a word or punctuation point can cause you to miss it. Still worth a shot, Honestly before spending 300 on a "how do I put this", 2nd or 3d tier gun, I would get a police trade in Glock for $330 with night sights, even though I am not crazy about 40, you can wait for 9's to pop up, They did have G22's and 27's yesterday or today. Got to keep the page open.

MIL-DOT said:

Wow, lotsa jerks chiming in here with useless comments about how the OP doesn't have to buy it if he doesn't like the price. Well, as true as that point admitedly is, it's also SO painfully obvious that it's totally useless and pointlessly argumentative.

The OP is merely commenting on this frequently seen practice of sellers asking absurd prices, on a very popular gun auction site, which I would think was perfectly fair game here on a gun-related discussion board.
If some of y'all don't like the subject, you're just as free to not read or comment in the thread, eh...

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Thanks for posting this! I'm amazed at the amount of emotion a post like the first one on this thread can trigger. I'm not sure if a lot of people overpaid for their guns or if they're high-priced sellers themselves but the comments sure can be amusing.

I'm sure to some degree the prices seen on GB and other such places are "best wishes" driven by some of the scalping prices we have seen over the past 5+ years. Some people take a bit longer to return to Earth -- if they ever do.

You know what I don't get?

People that post "I don't get XXXX" posts...

Every place selling anything has someone setting ambitious prices, trying to get the most from the seller. The more popular the auction site the more ambitious the prices....

Stick to slickguns.com, I have been doing the pricing 'thing" for as long as it has been around online. And "Buds" was the place 10 years ago, but now it's slickguns, because you can see whoever is selling that gun, which can be 2 dozen stores most of which are cheaper on that gun for any of a hundred reasons.

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neither are worth a squat if your looking for something that hasnt been in production for decades.

These days GB and all the other auction sites are full of dealers who put most of their inventory up there just to increase the chances of a sale. What you need to do is keep scouting and hunting, looking for that private seller who wants to move his unwanted impulse-buy gun to buy something else. That's where you get your deals.

How do I know? Because I've been that impulse buyer who sold a like-new gun for a good price because it didn't ring my bell and I wanted something else. More than once.

I think it's rather easy to find what you want if you have patience.
First, you do a search for what you want and look at the results. Let's say you want a P&R Smith M19. You do a search for S&W 19 P&R under firearms. You'll get a lot of them and it will include holsters and speed loaders and other stuff you don't want. You then go up to the search line and put after the original search -holster, -H&K (speed loaders) and refresh the search. You'll still see some "noise" because some sellers are savvy and know how to get around filters. You keep adding minuses (-grips, -sights, etc) and refresh each time. Pretty soon you get mainly what you want.... S&W Model 19 P&R guns. Once you are happy with the results, you save the search, name it and turn on email notifications. For notifications, turn on Exclude Relists so when an item does not sell and is relisted, you don't get an email. Then, every morning you get an email showing all the new listings for what you are looking for. You browse it and if one looks interesting you click the link and it takes you to the auction. If it's something truly hard-to-find then you may get an email once a week or two but one day your gun will pop up. Now, everyone else who is looking for the same thing may get the same email so if you want it, move on it. The emails come about 6am eastern so I browse my saved searches emails every morning while I have my coffee. 99 times out of 100 they don't have what I want but that 1 out of 100 could be the exact item you want.... or it may not be and you wait some more. It's simple and it's nice to get daily emails of stuff you are looking for.

Sure, lots of the stuff on there are priced high. Depends on what your buying. A per your example, I doubt I would be buying a Glock or similar on GB.

I see the same thing at some shops in the area.