illinoisburt
Member
My son was home for spring break over the weekend so I got an excuse to check out a half dozen local guns stores and stop in at the Alabama Gun Collector Association gun show. Interesting is putting it mildly. It's beautiful weather and folks must be feeling spring as then stores were busy. The gun show seemed well attended Sunday morning but I the one things that stood out to me was we weren't seeing much buying. The last time we had a gun browsing weekend was back in August and it seemed like everything that wasn't nailed down was going out the door.
So a few observations:
Ammo and reloading supplies are abundant. Just about every caliber of ammo was in stock at all the stores including 22LR. Prices were all over the place from cheap to crazy high. One store in particular was literally so full of ammo it was hard to walk in the door as it was piled up in the middle of the room creating aisles. I was tempted to snap a pic as the boxes had a variety of prices stamped on them - $19.99 for 100 CCI hollow points for the boxes on top, boxes further down the stack marked $14.99 and $10.99. Hmm.
Multiple stores and a bunch of vendors had 1000 sealed boxes of Tula steel ammo in 223, 762x39, and 9mm. The huge tables of "white box" ammo at the gun show was marked low but no one appeared excited by them.
Powder, primers, and components were reasonable if not a little cheaper. I picked up some unique for $22 a pound at the gun show. One of the vendors had a bunch of 5 pound jugs of trailboss - first time I have seen the big container anywhere the past few years.
Gun prices are an odd duck. Hunting rifles didn't seem to have changed a bit. Still have cheap plastic stocked bolt guns and expensive wood and blued steel. Very inexpensive pump shotguns up through nice higher end doubles.
Where things were strange was milsurps, ARs, AKs and other what I will call military-styled rifles. If it was old it was high. AKs started around $650 and went up. SKS $450+. Mosin Nagant (lots with "rare" tags) $350-800. Garands $900-1200.
The AR market was different. One store has M&P sport 2 on the shelf for $689, while literally the guy next door was at $525. At the gun show one of the larger displays had them for $469 along with Ruger AR for $519. Bunches of them available but didn't see many people buying. There were quite a few folks walking around with Colt ARs of various flavors trying to offload them. I don't think I heard any takers.
Think I'm going to just hang back and let the dust settle until later this summer. I know people loaded the boat in anticipation of a Hillary win. Once the squeeze is on and things get to actual loss prices the true bargains will show up.
What have you all been seeing in your area?
So a few observations:
Ammo and reloading supplies are abundant. Just about every caliber of ammo was in stock at all the stores including 22LR. Prices were all over the place from cheap to crazy high. One store in particular was literally so full of ammo it was hard to walk in the door as it was piled up in the middle of the room creating aisles. I was tempted to snap a pic as the boxes had a variety of prices stamped on them - $19.99 for 100 CCI hollow points for the boxes on top, boxes further down the stack marked $14.99 and $10.99. Hmm.
Multiple stores and a bunch of vendors had 1000 sealed boxes of Tula steel ammo in 223, 762x39, and 9mm. The huge tables of "white box" ammo at the gun show was marked low but no one appeared excited by them.
Powder, primers, and components were reasonable if not a little cheaper. I picked up some unique for $22 a pound at the gun show. One of the vendors had a bunch of 5 pound jugs of trailboss - first time I have seen the big container anywhere the past few years.
Gun prices are an odd duck. Hunting rifles didn't seem to have changed a bit. Still have cheap plastic stocked bolt guns and expensive wood and blued steel. Very inexpensive pump shotguns up through nice higher end doubles.
Where things were strange was milsurps, ARs, AKs and other what I will call military-styled rifles. If it was old it was high. AKs started around $650 and went up. SKS $450+. Mosin Nagant (lots with "rare" tags) $350-800. Garands $900-1200.
The AR market was different. One store has M&P sport 2 on the shelf for $689, while literally the guy next door was at $525. At the gun show one of the larger displays had them for $469 along with Ruger AR for $519. Bunches of them available but didn't see many people buying. There were quite a few folks walking around with Colt ARs of various flavors trying to offload them. I don't think I heard any takers.
Think I'm going to just hang back and let the dust settle until later this summer. I know people loaded the boat in anticipation of a Hillary win. Once the squeeze is on and things get to actual loss prices the true bargains will show up.
What have you all been seeing in your area?