I've got the bug to get another firearm (I know you all can relate) and I've been searching Armslist and a giant list of local gun groups on Facebook lately, just looking at what everyone is selling because sometimes I've ran across pretty good deals. It has really saddened me to see the vast quantities of low quality, poorly built and highly overpriced firearms people are selling lately. It seems that everyone around my area consider themselves gun dealers and I'm finding more used firearms priced so far over their MSRP that is laughable.
On the nice firearms that I've found, people either think that since they are the 3rd cousin, twice removed from John Wayne, their firearms should command a price as if they were The Duke themselves. Case in point, on the high quality side, I found a very nice Browning Superposed Match Skeet set. This is a very nice set and honestly worth around the $5500 range. This guy is not budging off of $10k. Now I'm not looking to spend that on this firearm, and honestly would not spend 5k right now on a gun anyhow, but it illustrates my point. Here's a link to his post:
http://www.armslist.com/posts/126621/oklahoma-shotguns-for-sale--collectors---browning-superopsed-match-set-4-barrel-o-u-collectors-setNow on the cheaper side of things, my local market is just flooded with cheap Hi-Point's, Chinese knockoffs, misleading sellers, incorrect descriptions and very abused firearms that command prices that would make nicer guns blush. I don't know what is going on, but it's not very promising.
I tried to be the nice guy and inform someone on facebook who was looking at what he was told was a Colt Government Model 80 22lr that it was not in fact a Colt, but rather imported by Umarex, manufactured by Walther under a Colt license. It says "Colt's Goverment Model" rather than "Colt Government Model" which is what it would have if it was a real Colt. They guy selling it specifically said is was indeed a Colt and is selling it as such. I felt somewhat compelled to just note that it was imported and manufactured buy Walther, but not actually a Colt. The buyer decided not to buy it and thanked me for supplying the correct information. The seller then sent me a very lengthy message about how I should not interfere with his sale if I was not interested in it, how it was not my business, etc.... I simply replied that if he didn't know that it wasn't a real Colt he should be thankful he was informed, and that if he was knowingly misleading someone into buying a firearm by giving false information, he should have expected someone to call him out on it. Am I in the wrong?
It seems people now are interested in quantity over quality, and somehow it is a badge of honor to say you own 20 guns or something to that affect. I'd take my R9, Seecamp, couple Colts, Browning rifle, and Citori and I'd be satisfied if I never owned another gun if that were the case. I'd rather have 1 really nice pistol over 10 junkers that won't shoot well. I'd equate it to having a Lamborghini which costs $250K, or spending the same amount of money on 100 used Diahatsu's, then turning around and asking $5,000 for each one after you've driven the wheels off of them. It seems like a no brainer to me, however I suppose I'm in the minority here. I think that I will just stick to online purchases from now on because there are still bargains to be had and honest folks like Tom that I can still deal with.
-Adam
