Went to the Tulsa show last weekend. About an average crowd; meaning so packed in there you could hardly move.
One dealer who has set up next to us for many years was having a going out of business sale. Seems he loaded up on black rifle stuff pre election and now can't get rid of it for the price he paid. I was seeing sub $400 ARs all over the place.
I also went to the Tulsa show and being my first time, I thought it to be fantastic. It was probably the best and most complete firearms and firearms collectible shows I've been to in maybe 30 years.
I'm firmly convinced that if one could not find what they were looking for at this show, it probably doesn't exist, or it does exist and is priced at more than one can afford. I found the latter case to be my problem at this particular show.
I went with no special goal, but did have in the back of my mind to see if I could find a nice vintage Winchester 1892 saddle ring carbine in 44-40 or 38-40. That or a Colt SAA in either of the same calibers. I gave up on the Colt pretty quickly. Due to demand and almost non-existent supply, SAA's--especially those in special order calibers were priced way over my budget. Not as bad as Python's but close.
However, I found tons of nice 1892 rifles and some of the dealers were were in the mood to negotiate.
Eventually, i had looked at so many Winchester lever guns that I went into sensory overload. I had never seen so many model 1866's,73's, 76's, 86's, 92's, 95's and especially 94's in one location.
To put this in perspective, in the last ten years of going to local shows ranging from 150 to 250 tables, I have seen maybe 2 or 3 vintage Winchester model 1866's for sale and only one original 1860 Henry. At this show I saw at least 30 or more Henry's and probably triple that in Winchester 1866's. How many period 17th century flintlock blunderbusses have you ever seen at a local gun show? Probably none. Hell, I saw 30 on one table---and antique guns do not make up the majority of the items in this show. At 4200 tables, this show is 20 times the size of most other local shows.
Also impressive were the display exhibitions put on by the big auction houses such as Rock Island, James Julia, and Dan Morphy to mention the top 3. They had museum quality exhibits of some of the high condition-high dollar stuff that they have coming up at auction. I think it was Rock Island that in one case had the most high condition martially inspected Colt SAA's from the Indian wars period that I've ever seen in one place. There were 6 or 7 of them, most in a condition that looked like they had just left the factory with the most notable one having a Little Big Horn provenance.
I totally wore myself out the first day and had not made a purchase other than some cheap zippered pistol rugs at 3 for $15. However, I went back on Sunday for about 5 more hours and found two treasures just before leaving.
One was nothing more than a replacement decorated cardboard sleeve for a 1976 Winchester Bicentennial commemorative model 94. However, I never expected ever even find such a thing.
The second item was the model 1892, I was looking for. It was manufactured in 1913 in 38-40 cal and appears to be unmolested with the exception of an aftermarket front sight blade (an easy fix with a new authentic blade from one of several suppliers) The bore is bright and shiny with lots of rifling left. The gun would easily rate close to 70% finish over all with a tight but smooth action. Since the seller was close to packing up, he was willing to come down a bit, but his original price was well below what i figured it should be looking at my Winchester pocket Blue book which is from 2015.
Right after we struck a deal, I headed for the exit. Before I could get out a guy wearing a dealer button on his shirt stopped me to ask if my rifle was for sale. Just as I said no, he offered me a price that would have been a $200 profit on the spot Him being a dealer let me know that I had done OK with the purchase, so I was tickled pink.
I will definitely go back to the next show this year in November.
P.S. Since all I was really looking at were vintage Winchesters, I have no idea on how the general pricing was trending on new stuff.
Here's a picture of the sleeve and the carbine