LEO Trade-In, Milsurp (in particular, TN/TX)?

[yhtomit]

Hi there!

I am currently a resident of Tennessee, and since to my knowledge I'm on good terms with the only ex of mine whom I know to live in Texas, I'm looking forward to moving back to Texas in 2012.

So, with those two states in mind, I have an innocent newbie question for the many people who talk about the advantages (and boy, there seem to be some great bargains sometimes!) of police trade-in and military surplus handguns.

The question: Where do you find them?

Are there favored gun stores that broker the trade-in process for police departments, and are therefore the places to look for the trade-in pistols? What about military surplus; I sometimes see some milsurp guns (like those W. German P6s) on sale from on-line dealers, but I wonder if there are shops where I might find them in person instead.

Ideally, I'd like to hear about places in eastern TN, and central (Austin / San Antonio or thereabouts) Texas.

If this question assumes too much to start with, I'm happy to hear more background generally about how a bill becomes a law WAIT, NO! about how a perfectly nice police / agency pistol becomes a salable pistol for me to consider

Cheers,

timothy

 

[mgmorden]

Very broad topic, so I'll attempt to attack this as best as possible .

In general, these things come in in batches. The importers usually sell them to distributers like AIM, SOG, Centerfire Systems, CDNN, etc. Century is an exception in that they are both an importer AND a distributor. Those are usually the guys selling them online. Now, if shops carry those guns, they are often ordering them from those distributors - the same place you're be ordering it from if you bought online. The shop is going to tack some profit margin onto the price. They have to, and I can't blame them, but I also have no problem cutting out the middle man and saving my money where I can. Also, a shop might only order a few of them. There may be some psychological factors at work in it, but essentially when a business has just a few of an item to sell they're going to try to up the margins a bit more than if they've got several pallets of them to get rid of.

All in all, what I'd recommend is that you get a C&R license ASAP. It's only $30 and lasts 3 years. With that, you can order anything that makes it on the approved C&R list and have it mailed right to you. For surplused pistols that don't make the list, just find a good local FFL that will do transfers. The guy I use locally normally charges $15 per gun, but it's getting to be a competitive market. He's doing only $10 per gun until the end of March (though I'll still probably pay $15-20 out of courtesy as I feel it's worth it). Small guys that just do transfers tend to have little overhead (the guy I use has a regular job and just does transfers on the side for extra money).

Other than that, just keep an eye out. These things tend to come in in waves, and anything you're interested in I recommend getting while they're good as once they're gone they're usually gone for a while and prices go up.

I been buying surplus guns for a long time. When I got into things circa 2003 the surplus Makarovs and Tokarevs were just starting to dry up. CZ-52's and Star Super's were the latest surplused guns. Got one of each of those.

After that the Nagants came on the market. I think that when those came over some importer worked out a deal and threw 2 fish and five loaves into the shipping crate because those don't seem to EVER run out . Naturally I got one of those. I think I paid $69 for that one.

Then a lot of the West German agencies started surplusing their SIG P6's, Walther P5's, and H&K P7's. Ended up snagging a P6 out of that batch.

More recently the Tokarevs have come back, and there's also been a shipment of CZ-82's, CZ-75's, and Israeli Hi Powers. Buds also just got rid of a bunch of surplus S&W P99's (really rebadged Walther P99's) that they had been selling as well, and CDNN has 3rd gen S&W 5906's as well.

Overall, it's fun, and it's a good way to get a lot of high quality guns. Most of them these days are hanging in the $200-400 price range, and there are certainly new guns for that, but realistically a lot of these guns are at a quality tier well above the new guns in the same price ranges. As a rule, regardless of the country you're talking about, police and military don't buy junk. Their guns might not be pretty, and they might have some awkward features, but these are people that need their weapons to work and work well.

 

[Thorgrim]

Tennessee is a pretty big state. Heck, "east TN" covers a lot of territory. If you're within driving range of Johnson City/Jonesborough, check out Widener's. They have a lot of good surplus weapons, and may have police trade-ins. They have a website if you just want to browse, but there's a lot more in the store than their website shows. I bought an absolute cherry Makarov from them a few years ago, and they had a ton of used guns in the cases of all descriptions. Good place to buy ammo, too, while you're there.

 

[mgmorden]

Good info. Though I know I touted the "buy online instead" bit pretty heavy, I will mention that Robertson Trading Post is in Henderson, TN and has surplus CZ-50's, CZ-75's, and Hi Power's right now.

 

[yhtomit]

Thorgrim, mgmorden: Thanks for the replies; very informative. I head up to the Johnson City area regularly but not often, so I'll add that to the "when passing by" list Henderson will be on my way any time I make the TN/TX road trip, or go to Memphis, too.

P7 surplus -- wish I'd gotten in on that

timothy