Are the days of good. surplus weapon prices behind us?

[Warrior1354]

My will stipulates a Viking funeral with all my cars and guns, so none of y'all getting any of my stuff.

Said funeral may be scheduled with very limited notice...and involve a Predator and a Hellfire...

 

[LtScott14]

I think the ship sailed on cheap mil surp firearms. The SKS and Mosin 95s in a crate for $100 is over. Even used, they are barely affordable. Ammo? good luck on that.
I was lucky to own a Makarov once. Wasn't bad, but ammo was not easy to find. Went to a 380ACP Bersa, and never looked back. Fits in the Original Makarov holster(flap style)and i dyed it black vs the red-brown. Its a great backpack gun.
A lot of owners have AK's, no issues with that. Mags and stocks were cheap, but that's changed.
Good luck on your searches.

 

[Tombs]

That is what happened to the machine gun collector market Tombs. Big time buyers with large amounts of cash bought a crap load of machine guns. Why? Better investments to them then stocks and bonds. Machine guns skyrocketed in price after 2009. I use to think $15,000 for a BAR was crazy. Nowadays you couldn't touch one for under $40,000. The big laugh to me M3 Grease guns for $35,000. When they were being made at the Guide lamp factory for under $40. If with inflation costs factored in that is $700 in todays money. Still we can say the same thing about land prices. Price of land is crazy. But guess what their not making anymore land.

The problem most folks don't seem to realize with paying ridiculous prices and driving stuff sky high is that they're slitting their own wrist in the process.

There's always someone else with more money than you. Like with blackrock holding over $10 trillion in assets now, and bidding for houses at 2 or even 3 times their market rate.

 

[DoggyDaddy]

I think the ship sailed on cheap mil surp firearms. The SKS and Mosin 95s in a crate for $100 is over. Even used, they are barely affordable. Ammo? good luck on that.
I was lucky to own a Makarov once. Wasn't bad, but ammo was not easy to find. Went to a 380ACP Bersa, and never looked back. Fits in the Original Makarov holster(flap style)and i dyed it black vs the red-brown. Its a great backpack gun.
A lot of owners have AK's, no issues with that. Mags and stocks were cheap, but that's changed.
Good luck on your searches.

I think 9mm Mak is even cheaper than .380 these days.

 

[TheJoker]

For instance, police trade in handguns, CMP M9 pistols (hopefully), etc..

I believe the CMP got out of the M1 Carbine business because of the detachable 15 round magazine. For the M9, I see the same issue. It would take congressional approval. I don't think it'll happen.

 

[bgcatty]

Those days are long gone; however, we have seen a huge stash of surplus rifles sitting in warehouses in Ethiopia if i remember correctly. Anyone else remember those pics of stacks and stacks of old surplus weaponry?

 

[Squid556]

Those days are long gone; however, we have seen a huge stash of surplus rifles sitting in warehouses in Ethiopia if i remember correctly. Anyone else remember those pics of stacks and stacks of old surplus weaponry?

I saw them on forgotten weapons a while ago. Decided to go through Royal Tiger imports to get an Enfield.

HUGE MISTAKE DO NOT BUY FROM ROYAL TIGER

They sent me a rifle far worse than in description. Didn't want to give me my money back. Then when they eventually refunded, they only gave back half. Kept the other half for restocking fee.

Their website is biased to where it won't take reviews under a certain rating. Mine was only a low dollar amount but I saw where a guy got screwed on a 1000+ dollar M1 carbine. Yep. Avoid them like the plague

 

[Ark]

Those days are long gone; however, we have seen a huge stash of surplus rifles sitting in warehouses in Ethiopia if i remember correctly. Anyone else remember those pics of stacks and stacks of old surplus weaponry?

The Ethiopian haul overwhelmingly seems to be shot out rusted trash.

 

[kaveman]

Cheap surplus isn't coming back. We got flooded with WWII and early post-war stuff when the Soviet empire broke up. Unless that happens again(it can't)there won't be any large supply of surplus coming in again. Some pistols maybe, but rifles are out. They pretty much quit making importable rifles 70yrs ago. All the more modern stuff has to be cut up and sold as kits.

If you younger guys dedicate yourself to the project you can build up a nice collection at today's prices. We old farts did it at yesterday's prices,......with yesterday's wages. I was making two bucks an hour when I started. Paid $125 for my first SKS(which turned out to actually be an SVT40). That was a stroke of luck that likely wouldn't happen today. The amount of free information available today is incredible. We didn't have that. By the time my collection reached twenty guns I had more money invested in books than I had invested in firearms.