Why Prices Go Up

I dabble in the flipping game, I have a booth in a local antique mall/flea market.....I tend toward the flea markety type goods.

My place of choice to buy is facebook and garage sales, and I love to buy BULK, collections can be picked up for a fraction of what they are worth, and the sellers KNOW that, but, they would prefer to get paid today rather than getting nickles and dimes for weeks or months.

I will check ebay for sold prices and use that to calculate what I can get, then make my offer, usually a bit less than they are asking, and they usually say yes.

Nothing wrong with making a few bucks, I pay what sellers want ( or close to) and sell to people willing to pay more

P5 Guy said:

Seems to me all the pre-lock and pre-MIM S&W revolvers are $1400.00 or more.
NIB with papers and tools only factory fired.

Click to expand...

There is nothing wrong with newer revolvers with MIM parts. The trigger is great both SA & DA and the price was just under $500.

P5 Guy said: ↑
Seems to me all the pre-lock and pre-MIM S&W revolvers are $1400.00 or more.
NIB with papers and tools only factory fired.

Click to expand...

You're not looking in the right places then

EX S&W 66-1 :https://www.gunsinternational.com/g...esson-model-66-1-357-mag.cfm?gun_id=101234258 $885

And a LOT more like that for a lot less than $1400

This topic falls under First World/Entitlement problems.

George P said:

You're not looking in the right places then

EX S&W 66-1 :https://www.gunsinternational.com/g...esson-model-66-1-357-mag.cfm?gun_id=101234258 $885

And a LOT more like that for a lot less than $1400

Click to expand...

He is probably talking about the stuff sold in fitted wooden boxes or old stuff in gold cardboard boxes. There were also red, blue,.....cardboard boxes used at different production periods.

George P said:

You're not looking in the right places then

EX S&W 66-1 :https://www.gunsinternational.com/g...esson-model-66-1-357-mag.cfm?gun_id=101234258 $885

And a LOT more like that for a lot less than $1400

Click to expand...

Hey, no box no big bucks.

I doubt very much if one schmo at a gun show, overpricing his wares, is the sole driving force for the increase of prices of collectable guns. Realistically, I doubt it has anything at all to do with it. Kinda like one shady used car salesman driving the price of all used cars up. Flipping guns, houses or anything else is only possible if there is a market. One needs to know that market in order to know what they can pay and still turn a profit on it when they sell it. Odds are, that Schmo probably knows more than he's lettin' on. Collectable markets are very volatile in that when the economy is doing well and lots of folks have disposable income, the demand for them and prices go up. When the economy is bad and folks don't have much left at the end of the month, so those looking for collectables are fewer and farther between. many times this is when the first thing to be dumped for whatever they can get is collectables. The very nature of collectables is volatile. Look at baseball cards, antiques and Beanie babies. At one time all were highly collectable and lots of folks made a killing. Now those folks stuck with them will probably never see their money back from them.

One only has to see the amazingly high amount of firearms that have been bought in the last 15 years to know that folks have disposable income to spend and there is a great interest/demand. This increase interest in firearms also has led to a increased interest in collectable firearms. Prices of those collectables is evidence of this. Will it last? Who knows, I can't see anything in my crystal ball.

A item, any item is worth what someone is willing to pay.

I do worry about dealers trading items among themselves. This has happened in the car hobby where one car gets passed back and forth between several dealers at a higher price each time making it look on paper as if the value has went up 300% in 2 years. In reality the demand is not there to support that price so if someone foolishly pays that price he will be badly burned if he sells it later.

If this type of trading becomes endemic in the gun hobby the market will ultimately correct and some people will get badly burned.

94045 said:

A item, any item is worth what someone is willing to pay.

I do worry about dealers trading items among themselves. This has happened in the car hobby where one car gets passed back and forth between several dealers at a higher price each time making it look on paper as if the value has went up 300% in 2 years. In reality the demand is not there to support that price so if someone foolishly pays that price he will be badly burned if he sells it later.

If this type of trading becomes endemic in the gun hobby the market will ultimately correct and some people will get badly burned.

Click to expand...

Based on what I would see on Sunday mornings before gunshows open...it already does

paulsj said:

He is probably talking about the stuff sold in fitted wooden boxes or old stuff in gold cardboard boxes. There were also red, blue,.....cardboard boxes used at different production periods.


Hey, no box no big bucks.

View attachment 844569

Click to expand...

No I'm talking about the sale ad on FSN, not one revolver offered was under $1250.

Then look at the link I posted and go to that site and find hundreds for less.

Bear in mind that the nominal prices on collectible guns are often not the actual cash prices. There's a lot of trading back and forth among collectors. Let's say that at a gun show, a collector-dealer puts a price of $1,000
on a certain gun (for which he had originally paid $500). He may be hoping that a newbie collector will offer him that much in cash for that gun. If, towards the end of the show, it hasn't sold, the dealer is going to start entertaining offers from his fellow collector-dealers, most of which will be trades for other guns. So he trades even for another gun with a nominal price of $1,000, but which also originally cost the other dealer $500. So we have two $500 guns changing hands, but now they are each supposedly worth $1,000. This is how price inflation takes place. It's really kind of a bootstrap Ponzi scheme. It's going to come to an end when the old collectors start dying off, and their heirs want cash instead of other guns.

denton said:

If a lot of people believe that old firearms are worth more and more each year, then they are.

Click to expand...

I think the differences in the nature of older guns has something to do with it. Lots more steel and wood, lots less plastic and aluminum. It might be the spiral in prices for old guns reflects both a nostalgia for the way these older weapons were made and a genuine aesthetic preference for them. An AR-15 might be a more effective weapon than a 1903 Springfield, but it certainly doesn't have the same soul. Getting an older military surplus gun might be the only way to afford a rifle made with machined steel and wood anymore.

redneck2 said:

Just a few years ago you could literally buy truck loads of Mosins for $89 each.

Click to expand...

Heh. I bought a pristine Hungarian-made M44 in 2001 for $60. My stepfather pried it away from me a few years later and would never let it go. Grrr...

AlexanderA said:

Bear in mind that the nominal prices on collectible guns are often not the actual cash prices. There's a lot of trading back and forth among collectors. Let's say that at a gun show, a collector-dealer puts a price of $1,000
on a certain gun (for which he had originally paid $500). He may be hoping that a newbie collector will offer him that much in cash for that gun. If, towards the end of the show, it hasn't sold, the dealer is going to start entertaining offers from his fellow collector-dealers, most of which will be trades for other guns. So he trades even for another gun with a nominal price of $1,000, but which also originally cost the other dealer $500. So we have two $500 guns changing hands, but now they are each supposedly worth $1,000. This is how price inflation takes place. It's really kind of a bootstrap Ponzi scheme. It's going to come to an end when the old collectors start dying off, and their heirs want cash instead of other guns.

Click to expand...

Not a Ponzi scheme, but a bubble. And like all bubbles, it will burst eventually, and some people will lose big money. Personally, I plan to bide my time for the next 10-15 years and buy up all the overpriced Garands, Mosins, and Mausers out there after prices have crashed.

There is one other thing unmentioned that is pushing up prices. As the large parts warehouses empty out, parts for a lot of old rifles are now getting scarce. Thus, the old fixer ugly rifles are getting thinnned out because they are being parted out on ebay or gunbroker, etc. I suspect that some of the parts houses are also bidders as I have come across a few odd auctions on parts collections where the ebay account of the bidder was hidden.

Most of those old ugly rifles are now often worth more for their parts than as a whole. Thus, prices go up at the low end and people wanting that model for a shooter are having to find more expensive prettier models and so on up the chain.

AlexanderA said:

000 If, towards the end of the show, it hasn't sold, the dealer is going to start entertaining offers from his fellow collector-dealers, most of which will be trades for other guns. So he trades even for another gun with a nominal price of $1,000, but which also originally cost the other dealer $500. So we have two $500 guns changing hands, but now they are each supposedly worth $1,000. This is how price inflation takes place. It's really kind of a bootstrap Ponzi scheme. It's going to come to an end when the old collectors start dying off, and their heirs want cash instead of other guns.

Click to expand...

You could just as easily argue that until either sell the gun for $1,000, they're each still only worth $500. Sellers don't create a bubble, the buyers willing to lay out the cash are what drive the prices up. I could try and sell a Glock 17 for $5,000 but it doesn't mean anything until a buyer comes along. I could trade that $5,000 Glock 17 for a $4,000 Glock 19, but that doesn't change the value of either. No matter how you manipulate the market you aren't going to get a P&R's S&W model 27 to sell for the same price as a Colt Python. Unless you can convince 10,000+ different buyers that the model 27 is worth just as much as a Python the market is not going to move that high. What 2 dealers do at one gun show is irrelevant. What one online seller does is irrelevant. The internet allows buyers in all 4 corners of the country no matter how urban or rural to compete on the same level. If someone wants to save a couple hours of researching various auctions and numerous websites and would rather overpay by $200 that's their choice.

It definitely will be interesting to see where the market sits 10 to 20 years from now. One factor that disrupts the firearms market unlike any other conventional market is politics that can drive the price of items up 100% over night and conversely drop the price to zero over night. Just imagine if rather than being banned, bumpstocks had been illegal to manufacture going forward. All the bumpstocks that aren't good for anything other than a trip to prison, would have doubled in value over night.