Cuervo - you said
Nothing wrong with searching for the best deal. It's part of the fun of the game. Also nothing wrong with buying what you want when you find it and moving on to the next thing.
and I completely agree with you. I would never recommend that someone do anything other than what they want to do. I am not a Hi Power "collector" but I wanted a Hi Power, and I wanted a MK III, and when I found a new 75th Anniversary model for sale at a little over 900 dollars, I bought it. It was what I wanted: a real Hi-Power with a pretty blued finish that I bought to shoot, not collect. Later I stumbled across a new MK III with the epoxy finish for actually a bit more. I bought it also. Both were new. Both have been superb. An FEG copy that a friend was selling would also shoot but would not have been a Hi Power in my mind in the same way. Nothng wrong with FEGs or another pistol entirely but I got what I wanted, have no plans to acquire more or sell the ones I have and am just as happy as if I had a couple of hundred dollars extra in the bank because I passed on them to find something roughly equivalent for 7 or 800 dollars. Probably more happy and went through less fuss. I think JTQ was merely reporting the general retail prices for some guns in his area and I find those prices he reported to be similar to what I find in my area a thousand miles away. Can better prices be found? Of course. Are better prices the norm? I don't think so, but I've been wrong before. Sometimes when you "look around" and go back to buy the original gun that caught your eye, you find someone has already purchased it. Snooze and lose, so to speak.I cringe at recommending to someone, even someone I've never met, to go out and spend $900-1000 on a pistol when he could find the same thing at a lower price that will do just as well with a little looking around.
Nothing wrong with searching for the best deal. It's part of the fun of the game. Also nothing wrong with buying what you want when you find it and moving on to the next thing.