Excess inventory of used firearms?

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Firpo

Sharpshooter
Supporting Member
Special Hen Supporter
Joined
Mar 24, 2020
Messages
2,304
Reaction score
6,689
Location
Lawton, Oklahoma
Guess I’m the odd man on this one. I will do whatever I can to buy from Mom and Pop shops and will knowingly pay more to give them the business. What I won’t do is pay twice what a gun is worth. I’m also confused about the few that have made statements about how these small shops don’t make any profit. Everyone I’ve ever known starts marking up their used guns (that’s about all I ever buy) at least twice what they pay for them. Case in point, and I’ve seen several examples, I brought in my Winchester Model 42 (pictured below) to an LGS just to test how square a place they were to do business.
1728599460513.jpeg

Now with a straight face he looked at me and said he’d give me $450 for it while…..now this is the good part. He was standing in front of a gun rack where he just so happened to have another Winchester Model 42 but not in near as nice condition with a price tag I had seen the week before of $1,799.00. I simply don’t believe that small shops are operating on a razor thin budget, at least not when it comes to the type of firearms I purchase.
 
Joined
Oct 26, 2009
Messages
3,014
Reaction score
5,431
Location
Edmond
Nobody's time is worthless. It's insulting to try and claim otherwise. This isn't a one-size fits all complaint. You can't really compare a home-based FFL doing this on the side to Academy or another business that's open full-time, etc.

There are plenty of folks willing to pay $20-25 for a transfer.
Homeless peoples' time is worthless.

Democrats congress lizards' time is worthless.

There are lots of worthless time out there.

Sooner State does $20,000 of transfers a month for a reason.
 

mtngunr

Sharpshooter
Special Hen
Joined
Aug 18, 2020
Messages
735
Reaction score
1,425
Location
Far East Okrahoma, USA
Guess I’m the odd man on this one. I will do whatever I can to buy from Mom and Pop shops and will knowingly pay more to give them the business. What I won’t do is pay twice what a gun is worth. I’m also confused about the few that have made statements about how these small shops don’t make any profit. Everyone I’ve ever known starts marking up their used guns (that’s about all I ever buy) at least twice what they pay for them. Case in point, and I’ve seen several examples, I brought in my Winchester Model 42 (pictured below) to an LGS just to test how square a place they were to do business.
View attachment 518405
Now with a straight face he looked at me and said he’d give me $450 for it while…..now this is the good part. He was standing in front of a gun rack where he just so happened to have another Winchester Model 42 but not in near as nice condition with a price tag I had seen the week before of $1,799.00. I simply don’t believe that small shops are operating on a razor thin budget, at least not when it comes to the type of firearms I purchase.
Jewelry has what's called triple keystone, furniture generally operates same way, priced three times actual cost so that they can run sales or haggle. Gun stores are no different except profit margins on new is far far less, especially with smaller stores who often pay about what you can pay with careful online shopping, the small shops not getting near the price breaks due to lower volume ordering.
 
Joined
Aug 14, 2024
Messages
39
Reaction score
71
Location
Bartlesville
I'm retired now but when I owned a gunshop many years ago I liked doing transfers. Would I prefer to sell the gun from inventory of course. My business partner hated transfers and would sometimes piss off a customer and then I would try and make amends. It got to the point that customers would not even talk to him but would insist on dealing with me. Reason I liked transfers is we had several collectors who order guns online that there would be no way for us to have in inventory. Some of these guys would do several transfers a month sometimes several in a week. What the transfer did for us that my partner didn't always grasp was these guys talk to others and plus if he ordered a rifle from someplace if it needed work our gunsmith did it, if it needed a scope, ammo, sling etc we sold it to him. We might make $50 to a $100 on a rifle but maybe a thousand on accessories. Plus I would if I could I would always stand and BS with a customer if time allowed. So to me transfers made great business sense. Plus it was a blast to see and handle some of these firearms we did transfers for.
 

BobbyV

Are you serious?
Supporting Member
Special Hen Supporter
Joined
Dec 31, 2013
Messages
5,892
Reaction score
8,592
Location
Logan County
I'm retired now but when I owned a gunshop many years ago I liked doing transfers. Would I prefer to sell the gun from inventory of course. My business partner hated transfers and would sometimes piss off a customer and then I would try and make amends. It got to the point that customers would not even talk to him but would insist on dealing with me. Reason I liked transfers is we had several collectors who order guns online that there would be no way for us to have in inventory. Some of these guys would do several transfers a month sometimes several in a week. What the transfer did for us that my partner didn't always grasp was these guys talk to others and plus if he ordered a rifle from someplace if it needed work our gunsmith did it, if it needed a scope, ammo, sling etc we sold it to him. We might make $50 to a $100 on a rifle but maybe a thousand on accessories. Plus I would if I could I would always stand and BS with a customer if time allowed. So to me transfers made great business sense. Plus it was a blast to see and handle some of these firearms we did transfers for.
Sounds like you were doing things the right way.
 
Joined
Sep 12, 2013
Messages
699
Reaction score
457
Location
Oklahoma City
Guess I’m the odd man on this one. I will do whatever I can to buy from Mom and Pop shops and will knowingly pay more to give them the business. What I won’t do is pay twice what a gun is worth. I’m also confused about the few that have made statements about how these small shops don’t make any profit. Everyone I’ve ever known starts marking up their used guns (that’s about all I ever buy) at least twice what they pay for them. Case in point, and I’ve seen several examples, I brought in my Winchester Model 42 (pictured below) to an LGS just to test how square a place they were to do business.
View attachment 518405
Now with a straight face he looked at me and said he’d give me $450 for it while…..now this is the good part. He was standing in front of a gun rack where he just so happened to have another Winchester Model 42 but not in near as nice condition with a price tag I had seen the week before of $1,799.00. I simply don’t believe that small shops are operating on a razor thin budget, at least not when it comes to the type of firearms I purchase.
You have no concept of OverHead!
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom