OK. I wasn't talking about reselling crap! If I offer to put a Perazzi shotgun up for sale at around $4,000, I don't want to pay 20% i.e., $800 for hosting my gun. Then the poor SOB has to pay the sales tax to boot! Mike, I don't get your negativity. I don't know why I bother. Preaching to the choir is one thing. 47,972 post's of self grand standing is well grandstanding! Remember, I said these shops had crap for inventory, they weren't swamped with inventory. I have seldom seen you agree with a poster! Done, If he is a moderator, please burn my account!
There's no negativity here, just a reality check. I wouldn't put a 4K perazzi on consignment at a gun shop anyways. That's a specialty gun and you're far better off listing it on gunbroker or gunsamerica, where the fees are tiny. BTW with the system I would have (if I had a shop) the "guy with the 4K perazzi" would make out pretty good because I wouldn't be collecting 20% from him. The problem with a gun like that is it would sit and collect dust in most gun shops, unless your shop is one of the very, very few, known to sell high end bird guns.
The shops you speak of with no inventory are probably tiny, and without some kind of a marketing spiel like the thing FS has where guns get listed, putting a bunch of stuff on consignment doesn't mean it's going to move, it just means its going to tie up space in your shop... and in MA this is a real issue... most gun shops in MA are the size of a shoebox.
Not sure where the butthurt is coming from, I'm just saying that any gun shop owner is going to laugh at you on a 10% consignment unless its a high dollar item- it's literally not worth the overhead to do that. Maybe 15+ years ago your gripes would be more warranted back when nobody had internet and there were very few alternatives for selling guns other than putting them in the newspaper or one of those trader mags like uncle henrys or whatnot. If the LGS consignment rate is too high for your blood there's always GB and GA, maybe another I'm forgetting offhand. Then you can keep most of the value for yourself. Consignment these days is for people too lazy to do that or don't want to deal with the BS, and you pay a price for that. I've sold lots of guns on consignment myself knowing that I'm going to lose 15-18% off the top. In a couple cases I actually got lucky and broke even or even made a tiny bit of cash. (because I got a good deal on a used gun. )
After you've allowed the smoke to come out of your ears you might want to look into what it actually costs an 01 or an 07 to run their shop. Even just keeping the lights on and keeping the licenses active is an expense, especially considering property in a place zoned for retail. Those costs have to be recovered somehow. Even the guys I know in shoebox type gun shops in MA who are lucky enough to get really cheap rent still have significant overhead.
I agree with you in the sense that I would love to put a gun on consignment for 10%- but I've also seen the industry enough to know that's not a realistic target for most shops, except possibly for high dollar items. It's not a sustainable model. You'd also have to do more things that would annoy the people consigning the guns, like rejecting their consignment outright on guns that are marginally desireable, otherwise that thing will be hanging around the shop (on the books) forever. At 15-20% if it burns up floor space for a year its not the end of the world. At 10% that gets old pretty fast.
Also bear in mind part of a consignment is the gun shop eats the "liability" of that gun. Part of one of the features of consigning a gun is that if you sell it and the buyer kills it a week later somehow joe fungohead isn't going to come yelling at you, you've paid the dealer to act as a buffer. A long time ago I sold a seecamp in perfect condition on consignment. Some guy bought it like 2 days later. I get paid. In talking to the shop owner casually about 2 weeks after that, I found out the guy who bought it somehow broke the thing, and the gun shop owner helped him get it repaired with seecamp free under warranty... but it was an entire hassle that I did not have to deal with. that's what your 15-20% is paying for on a consignment, to be free of aggravation and grief.
I am sorry that you are butthurt about my opinion on consignments. I'm not sure what I can do to remedy that. We can agree to disagree, I guess. Perhaps my view is a little different because I've been on both sides of the counter. This type of anger you are expressing here is similar to the disdain people express for shop X Y or Z when they get offered crap on a trade in, but usually when people are angry and stomping their feet about the fact that local gun shop XYZ only wants to give them $100 for their Ruger LC9 or even less for a Para Warthog- they are doing so without realizing the business realities of the situation. A gun shop isn't some kind of a charity or a handout. Even the most consumer friendly shops I know of, that do things like $20 (or even less!) transfers, and that kind of thing... at some point or another they all have to make money, otherwise it's pointless to be in business.
-Mike