Sudden value increase!

It's hard...One day during one of the various past panics I just decided what my favorite "children" were. Kept one Bulgarian 74 and one milled Arsenal 47. Sold 2 Poly's and 2 other milled Arsenals, 3 AR's and a metric shit ton of ammo and some pistols.

I have plenty of what I need and don't miss any of my adopted "children" a bit.

All these "panics" is also what kind of disgusted me about the whole gun culture and the herd mentality of it all. Sheep cause prices to go up and in turn make shooting a very expensive activity..What's a 30rd mag dump of 5.56 nowadays, $15.00 ? F that noise lol
So how'd you do it? Private sales until limit is reached then the rest through FFL, or consignment-style?
Thanks for this post.
 
Market Basket has Prime grade Ribeye steaks for $15.99 a pound, and they look really good, that's a really good price.

OK... I LOVE RIBEYE! There, I've said it.

Ribeye by its nature is fatty. I've bought both choice and prime cuts. And the difference for me is not that big. Ribeye by its nature is a "softer" cut and easy to chew. And there's typically plenty of fat flavor in many of them. I don't find the extra marbling is worth the money.

However, a good prime NY strip steak is definitely better than choice. NY strip is a bit chewier. The extra marbling adds great flavor and also makes it a "softer" cut of meat. Truth is the marbling becomes a bit of a lubricant that minimizes friction while chewing.

Certainly YMMV...
 
Yes, early this week. Just found out the PT is non existent
I'm in the wholesale lumber industry 30+ years and worked for a wood treater for 9 years in Georgia. Prices are high and lead times out to middle of August. Combination of high demand ( all the people stuck at home the past 3 months doing projects for one thing), lower supply, mills having to operate at reduced staffing due to social distancing requirements, plus many mill workers staying home and collected more money with the bonus unemployment, than coming back to work. No imported plywood to speak of in the US ports, (lots of plywood from Brazil and Chile these days). Basic Economics 101 high demand low supply, high prices. I bought 2 trucks of 7/16 4x8 OSB Friday for the second week in August delivery.
It won't last forever 4th quarter of 2020 prices will drop like a bowling ball dropped of a ten story building.
 
It's even worse in free states.

You can't even buy an AR because they are all sold out.

At least in Mass you can build one since lowers are still available.

No, that's wrong.
There are AR's available - and you can mailorder in 80% lowers, lowers, lpk's and uppers from online sources without any crap about "we're not shipping into that state".
 
why the f*** are people even buying used AR's for $1500+?!?!?!?!... just f***ing build it. You can definitely build one for under $1000 brand new everything... stop being lazy, shop around, check classified, check armslist, plenty of deals. Stop wasting your hard earned money on a used AR15. Tell that nerd who says "FiRm $1700" for walmart brand AR (yes I know, their is no walmart brand AR) to pound pavement. Go build it for cheaper, and to how you like it.
 
Last edited:
I'm trying to figure out what to put my Colt M4 with Magpul plastic on the market for. The MSRP seems to be $1,199 but I don't remember what I paid. Literally only bought it to F-U the AG. Don't want to gouge, don't want to be a chump....
 
why the f*** are people even buying used AR's for $1500+?!?!?!?!... just f***ing build it. You can definitely build one for under $1000 brand new everything... stop being lazy, shop around, check classified, check armslist, plenty of deals. Stop wasting your hard earned money on a used AR15. Tell that nerd who says "FiRm $1700" to pound pavement. Go build it for cheaper, and to how you like it.

Not everyone shares that same enthusiasm. It may be infinitely cheaper and more fun to do, but some people just want a plug and play version to stick in the safe. Sourcing parts, reading reviews, really making it your own the first time around can be daunting.

“What’s the difference between carbine, mid, and rifle length gas systems? Chrome lined what now? M4 profile vs government profile?!? Whaddya mean they’re the same? One just accepts a freaking grenade launcher?!?!”

It’s not difficult but it’s not real clear cut either.
 
why the f*** are people even buying used AR's for $1500+?!?!?!?!... just f***ing build it. You can definitely build one for under $1000 brand new everything... stop being lazy, shop around, check classified, check armslist, plenty of deals. Stop wasting your hard earned money on a used AR15. Tell that nerd who says "FiRm $1700" for walmart brand AR (yes I know, their is no walmart brand AR) to pound pavement. Go build it for cheaper, and to how you like it.
you can also buy a new, fully assembled, major manufacturer, for around 850-900. Not long ago I grabbed a SA Saint at more than 100 under MSRP, that has proven itself to be reliable and accurate, at 950 it was a good starting point, and no issues between parts.
 
Not everyone shares that same enthusiasm. It may be infinitely cheaper and more fun to do, but some people just want a plug and play version to stick in the safe. Sourcing parts, reading reviews, really making it your own the first time around can be daunting.

“What’s the difference between carbine, mid, and rifle length gas systems? Chrome lined what now? M4 profile vs government profile?!? Whaddya mean they’re the same? One just accepts a freaking grenade launcher?!?!”

It’s not difficult but it’s not real clear cut either.

I agree, I was in the same boat I wanted a plug and play. Just wanted to buy a built AR and go shoot. But then I see the prices and I am just like, wtf... $1500+ for a used AR, not even a top tier AR we are talking entry level. So I read some articles, watched some videos, etc... and said f*** that rather just build.

I think at the first glance it can be daunting and scary, but if you take the time, watch some videos, read some articles, check the forums (All of which can be done while taking your daily shit) it'll put people at ease. You save a bunch of money, which you can use on getting AMMO (so long as you can find it).
 
Deals are out there if you look hard enough. One could build a brand new entry level AR-15 for under a $900 right now. You could pay $250 for an Anderson lower from TPNES and buy this upper kit from Pickett's Mill PMA 16'' Upper Receiver Carbine Length 5.56 NATO 1/8 Nitride 13.5'' M-Lok MOE Kit for $599 use the promo code AMMOLAND20 and get an automatic $120 off for a price of $479.99 shipping $9.99 (total $ 489.98) and for a grand total of $739.98. Bring it to Saxonville Armory have them pin & weld a muzzle device ($75) pin the stock ($45) buy a cheap muzzle device Yankee Hill Machine Phantom Muzzle Brake 5.56mm, Flat End ($35.49 shipped ) and you have a brand new " ban compliant " AR15 for under $900.00 $895.47 to be exact. and with the promo code you would technically only be paying $130 for the Anderson lower. Say " f*** it " and don't make it ban compliant and you have a brand new AR-15 for close to $700!! In this climate,if 45 doesn't get reelected expect the worse. No excuse not to get an AR-15.

I expect to see this see this combo in the WTS section in a couple of weeks for $2500 :p
 
Deals are out there if you look hard enough. One could build a brand new entry level AR-15 for under a $900 right now. You could pay $250 for an Anderson lower from TPNES and buy this upper kit from Pickett's Mill PMA 16'' Upper Receiver Carbine Length 5.56 NATO 1/8 Nitride 13.5'' M-Lok MOE Kit for $599 use the promo code AMMOLAND20 and get an automatic $120 off for a price of $479.99 shipping $9.99 (total $ 489.98) and for a grand total of $739.98. Bring it to Saxonville Armory have them pin & weld a muzzle device ($75) pin the stock ($45) buy a cheap muzzle device Yankee Hill Machine Phantom Muzzle Brake 5.56mm, Flat End ($35.49 shipped ) and you have a brand new " ban compliant " AR15 for under $900.00 $895.47 to be exact. and with the promo code you would technically only be paying $130 for the Anderson lower. Say " f*** it " and don't make it ban compliant and you have a brand new AR-15 for close to $700!! In this climate,if 45 doesn't get reelected expect the worse. No excuse not to get an AR-15.

I expect to see this see this combo in the WTS section in a couple of weeks for $2500 :p

This... You could probably even find an upper for even cheaper. Plenty of people selling NIB uppers that have just been collecting dust in their safes. Maybe ill sell mine for $5000... anyone interested let me know. Already built, ready to pew pew.
 
Deals are out there if you look hard enough. One could build a brand new entry level AR-15 for under a $900 right now. You could pay $250 for an Anderson lower from TPNES and buy this upper kit from Pickett's Mill PMA 16'' Upper Receiver Carbine Length 5.56 NATO 1/8 Nitride 13.5'' M-Lok MOE Kit for $599 use the promo code AMMOLAND20 and get an automatic $120 off for a price of $479.99 shipping $9.99 (total $ 489.98) and for a grand total of $739.98. Bring it to Saxonville Armory have them pin & weld a muzzle device ($75) pin the stock ($45) buy a cheap muzzle device Yankee Hill Machine Phantom Muzzle Brake 5.56mm, Flat End ($35.49 shipped ) and you have a brand new " ban compliant " AR15 for under $900.00 $895.47 to be exact. and with the promo code you would technically only be paying $130 for the Anderson lower. Say " f*** it " and don't make it ban compliant and you have a brand new AR-15 for close to $700!! In this climate,if 45 doesn't get reelected expect the worse. No excuse not to get an AR-15.

I expect to see this see this combo in the WTS section in a couple of weeks for $2500 :p


Yep I had the same idea. I bought 2 lowers from TPNES and was going to build budget AR's. I should have known myself better though. Next thing you know, titanium BCG, captured spring systems, billet uppers, drop in triggers and match grade barrels. Next thing you know I have 2 very nice ARs that i'm in for around $4600.00. Word to the wise, never shop for gun parts buzzed or really late at night while your half asleep. At least that still much cheaper than the precision rifle build i'm building.
 
Yep I had the same idea. I bought 2 lowers from TPNES and was going to build budget AR's. I should have known myself better though. Next thing you know, titanium BCG, captured spring systems, billet uppers, drop in triggers and match grade barrels. Next thing you know I have 2 very nice ARs that i'm in for around $4600.00. Word to the wise, never shop for gun parts buzzed or really late at night while your half asleep. At least that still much cheaper than the precision rifle build i'm building.

I've made some of my most fun purchases while a little buzzed...
 
Last edited:
That said, shop gouging is absolutely a thing. Like the time I saw a LGS employee buying ammo at walmart and them reselling it at the LGS at a mark up during Obama's latter years. Or the last(and final) time I was at Outback, they were pulling inventory off the shelf and repricing it while the store was open(pro tip: do that shit while closed or at least offer a reach around). Magtech 9mm went off the shelf at $11.99 a box and came back at $15.99 a box about 8 minutes later.

Still not gouging. Ever hear of "covering replacement costs" ? Also, if you're a gun shop and you're not taking a little extra when you can get it then you're going to go out of business pretty fast, unless you're blessed enough to have a business built up decent enough that you will have at least a sustainable trickle of customers during lean times, where the little tiny guys get
nothing. As far as the guys harvesting ammo at Walmart that was more of a problem with Walmart than anything else for not setting purchase limits. Also if you seen what some dealers have to mess with from the back and you wouldn't be bitching about it. A lot of those dudes were at Walmart because their distributor wouldn't send them anything or had nothing to send. Of course he's going to mark it up while he's got to make his points at the end of the day or whatever he can get. Nobody does this stuff for charity dude.

Walmart back when they had a spine should have had a POS system coding that would only let a drivers license # purchase so many boxes of ammo a week or something, or otherwise
lock out the customer past a certain point. Or some other barrier to ration the ammo. Don't whine at the flippers for exploiting their crappy rationing system.

Gun owners, particularly retired gun owners(LEOs who flip guns come in second) who have all the time in the world to travel and pick up cheap prebans out of state to resell at rape pricing, are the worst thing to happen to the gun community in Mass. Instead of "how can we grow the community" more often than not it's "how much can I profit from the community".

Lol now you're espousing socialism. On one hand, I get it- I understand where you're coming from- I hate this faggot flipper culture too that has evolved, but guess what, it's here to stay, and ultimately, it's just capitalism. You can't have capitalism and complain about pricing being "unfair" at the same time. The best way to fight flipper culture is to NOT BUY STUFF from
them. Make them eat or sit on their shit for awhile... if you do it long enough it will punch them in the rectum and they'll either have to sell at a more reasonable price, or at a loss, or get
lost. We can have a real conversation about "price gouging" if you want, but it better involve bottles of water, gasoline, or food something like that. As someone watching the industry right now, there are plenty of joe averagepersons that don't have a lot buying guns just fine, despite the BS going on. My ex could still even afford a gun and a couple boxes of ammo if she really wanted one, and she barely has a pot to piss in.

We deserve everything we get because even we treat each other like shit when it comes to profiteering.

Here you go again- you're making the assumption that every gun owner is your friend and wants to do you a favor. In business, outside of specific vendor > customer cultivated customer relationships, pretty much nobody does this. Most people that are selling shit are doing it to make a few bucks. Selling shit for nothing is a waste of time and is blood money.

Also, IMHO rape level"Profiteering" only works if you have a captive audience of idiots willing to overpay for stuff. 15-20 years ago gun consumers weren't quite as dumb as this as they are now. The point at which the consumer "gives up" and stops buying overpriced shit was way lower. I would term it "the point of abandonment". Consumers were more informed and tended to feed into hysteria less.

Also while we're on the topic of profiteering, how come nobody (and I'm not targeting YOU btw, just saying this in general) ever seems to complain about the ass raping they take outside of the gun industry? For example, the past few weekends I guarantee you that half of the price whining bitches on this forum bought fireworks in NH at 100-200%+ markup, or more. They import that shit for nothing and rape on it, because they have to, they only make lots of sales maybe 3 times a year total, with one holiday drowning out the other two. Nobody ever complains about fireworks prices, though. Or for that matter, Diamonds, another very rapey industry. On the other hand, everyone comes in and loses their shit when a gun shop makes $5 on a box of ammo. [rofl] Or bitches when some idiot overprices a tier 4 AR at like $2200. If the price is too rough kehds, then dont buy it! [rofl]

Let me give you a little treatise here on, in relative terms, how little things mean. Say I am an LGS, my distributor still eeks me out a couple cases of 9mm at about $200 a
case. I manage to get two cases and price it out at $16 a box and sell it all in one day. That's a whopping profit of $6 a box. Selling 2 cases of ammo made me $240 that day, which, if I'm lucky, might pay for two guys to work in the store off the cuff (and I'm not talking all the usual tax/medicabe/UE ins and all the other bullshit) Now those two cases of ammo didn't even
make me any profit but "kinda" paid for my helpers in the shop for the day. Whoopty do. I haven't even gotten to electricity, rent/lease (or property taxes) utilities, and all the other myriad of costs that come in running a business at retail. Yes, sure I will sell other stuff that day, but I'm not going to sell as much of it as I sold of 9mm.

We laugh about the dems eating their own, the exact same thing happens right here in the classifieds. If it wasn't for @TPNES cutting the legs out from under the gougers we'd still be seeing ~$1000 entry level stripped lowers here(thanks for that BTW, it's nice to see not everyone wants to exploit the situation).

I have great respect for TPNES and what he does, (because basically he is making a lot of flippers eat large silver platters of shit right now) but functionally what he is doing is no different than what the gougers/rape artists are doing in the classifieds, he's just way, way better at it than they are, but the principle is EXACTLY the same. Find something, make it available, profit.

(this should play when you call @TPNES on his cell phone.... )

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2elSNrRxus


I also think you give the flippers way too much credit. A lot of those people often have to eat shit, and sell stuff for less than what they originally listed it for. Especially as these things start
to drag on in time.

So flame on "free market"(something Ma. residents don't live in) bleaters, flame on.

Lol all us gun markets are not open because of federal law, setting MA stupid bullshit aside, which for kids with big kid pants, really isn't a
thing, more of an annoyance. Guys like TPNES and a dozen other people regularly give access to people who want the big kid pants.

That said, food for thought- if it truly was an open market and we could buy guns and ammo on say, Amazon, and only Amazon and maybe a half other dozen retailers sold that
stuff..... and they were all configured to run off minimal profit (eg, extremely "market efficient" ) there would be no guns and no ammo for sale right now because it would all
be f***ing gone. [rofl] The "apex market predator" guys (like myself, and a ton of other people here) the guys that strike before the market turns to shit, if we get lucky enough, would have raped the entire market like the way that General Sherman raped Georgia. Scorched earth. There would be NOTHING for plebs/newbies/etc to buy at anything resembling a normal price. You would only be able to buy stuff from the people you hate the most- the flippers. Guys like me wouldn't be flipping, I like to generally hold onto my shit... but some other guys around here would flip a few things here and there to make money. It would be worse than it is now because the distribution would be even less controlled, and more chaos.

(NSFW)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pcMn5bXbRU


Oh and one more thing...


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg5RgI2GeKk


LGSes and others setting "shit prices" in a way is actually a necessary evil during this bullshit. It acts as a tamping mechanism to keep more product available for more
people. If the market was open and all sellers were minimal markup, there would be no product available except via flippers. At least the LGS making the 5 bucks a
box will put it on the shelf and sell it- because having shit to buy makes their customers happy.
 
All these "panics" is also what kind of disgusted me about the whole gun culture and the herd mentality of it all. Sheep cause prices to go up and in turn make shooting a very expensive activity..What's a 30rd mag dump of 5.56 nowadays, $15.00 ? F that noise lol

Yes, but had you kept your shit you used to accumulate, at the prices you and I used to buy that shit at, that mag dump with M193 equiv 5.56 would cost us about 5-6 bucks or
so, maybe $7.50 on a bad year where the Rileys drive by XM193 loaf price was like $125.00... [laugh]

I wouldn't blame gun culture in its entirety. It's new vs old. You probably have been shooting longer than I have but the method of induction so to speak has changed. Back before Sandyhook and obamascares, new gun owners were different. They entered with some trepidation. Which means they sought guidance from others that they thought knew better. New gun owners WANTED to be informed. Now it's all about instant gratification. You still see that pragmatism now with some new gun owners, but it ain't a majority. It's some guy going into a gun shop now going BWEAHIWANNAGUN CUZ IM AFRAID OF OBAMA (or insert some bogeyman here) not, "I'm going to ask my friend Greg about guns because I know he owns them and can probably tell me a few things". I think most of us from the pre-sandy hook BS era had a lot more guidance from others. Either from family (because people grew up in gun families) or from accumulated experience from other gun people we knew, etc, or because we stuffed our face into some book or internet post about some gun that captured our attenetion and wanted to learn shit. I love the fact that there are more gun owners, problem is many of them are taking the homer simpson approach... "Waiting Period? BUT IM ANGRY NOW!!!!" [rofl] Nobody has any patience for anything anymore. There was a measured pragmatism among the overwhelming majority of gun enthusiasts. Now as a % a huge part of that is gone. I blame a lot of social
media BS, and the 24 hr news cycle as well. It froths people into a lather and then people on the "Ow, my balls" end of the spectrum succumb to hysteria rather easily.
 
So how'd you do it? Private sales until limit is reached then the rest through FFL, or consignment-style?
Thanks for this post.

I won't speak for Greg, but back when I had to occasionally fire sale shit because of necessity (eg to pay bills that my ex helped accumulate and most of the time, not for "profit") I ran 95% of my sales through FFLs. I saved the FTFs for people I knew, or situations where using a dealer made it a pain in the ass. Or in one case, when "The Rat" didn't show up at his shop where I was going to run the transfer, wasn't in his shop and wouldn't allow his staff to do transfers (apparently, none of them were "responsible persons" on the FFL) although the nice guys in his shop let us use his copy machine and gave us a free FA-10 form.... I always laugh at that, he screwed himself out of 35 bucks and I got to use his copy machine, for nothing, and also neither me or the other guy bought anything in his store... [rofl] (the shop wasnt my choosing, but the buyer found it convenient so I went there).
 
Best thread post I have read and reread in almost a year. Bravo Dr. Grant. Bravo...
~Enbloc
 
I won't speak for Greg, but back when I had to occasionally fire sale shit because of necessity (eg to pay bills that my ex helped accumulate and most of the time, not for "profit") I ran 95% of my sales through FFLs. I saved the FTFs for people I knew, or situations where using a dealer made it a pain in the ass. Or in one case, when "The Rat" didn't show up at his shop where I was going to run the transfer, wasn't in his shop and wouldn't allow his staff to do transfers (apparently, none of them were "responsible persons" on the FFL) although the nice guys in his shop let us use his copy machine and gave us a free FA-10 form.... I always laugh at that, he screwed himself out of 35 bucks and I got to use his copy machine, for nothing, and also neither me or the other guy bought anything in his store... [rofl] (the shop wasnt my choosing, but the buyer found it convenient so I went there).
Lol, After reading your previous posts, all I want to do is hold my guns closer and never let them go. I love you man...
 
Get a room
Does a "chat" room count...? [rofl]

But, I'll go one step further...

I have many, many years of shooting firearms. Privately and while in the Service. I truly enjoy the sport and the Right to do so.
Now, I'm not saying that amounts to a hill of beans, but I'll tell you this; I hold drgrant (Mike) in the highest regard.
He is always spot-on, timely and as far as I'm concerned his contributions here on NES, are an educational wind-fall.
~Enbloc
 
Last edited:
I'm trying to figure out what to put my Colt M4 with Magpul plastic on the market for. The MSRP seems to be $1,199 but I don't remember what I paid. Literally only bought it to F-U the AG. Don't want to gouge, don't want to be a chump....

There's similar one on GB with a BIN price of $1500 + $40 shipping... so figure $1500-1600 and someone is getting a good deal that wants a colt.

Someone is going to go "bweah but thats inflated blah blah" Well, Colt stopped making guns for awhile, that caused the price of the 6920s and their related models to go up a
little. You have to decide for yourself how much "MA tax" or not you want to put on it. I'm not sure what you paid for it, but I am guessing its about $1300ish if you paid the typical 6920 price plus some extra to "massify" it. I'd be PMing you an offer now if I hadn't bought another gun today... [laugh]

If it was me I'd keep the thing or only sell it to a friend who I knew wasn't going to flip it.
 
Still not gouging. Ever hear of "covering replacement costs" ? Also, if you're a gun shop and you're not taking a little extra when you can get it then you're going to go out of business pretty fast, unless you're blessed enough to have a business built up decent enough that you will have at least a sustainable trickle of customers during lean times, where the little tiny guys get
nothing. As far as the guys harvesting ammo at Walmart that was more of a problem with Walmart than anything else for not setting purchase limits. Also if you seen what some dealers have to mess with from the back and you wouldn't be bitching about it. A lot of those dudes were at Walmart because their distributor wouldn't send them anything or had nothing to send. Of course he's going to mark it up while he's got to make his points at the end of the day or whatever he can get. Nobody does this stuff for charity dude.

Walmart back when they had a spine should have had a POS system coding that would only let a drivers license # purchase so many boxes of ammo a week or something, or otherwise
lock out the customer past a certain point. Or some other barrier to ration the ammo. Don't whine at the flippers for exploiting their crappy rationing system.



Lol now you're espousing socialism. On one hand, I get it- I understand where you're coming from- I hate this faggot flipper culture too that has evolved, but guess what, it's here to stay, and ultimately, it's just capitalism. You can't have capitalism and complain about pricing being "unfair" at the same time. The best way to fight flipper culture is to NOT BUY STUFF from
them. Make them eat or sit on their shit for awhile... if you do it long enough it will punch them in the rectum and they'll either have to sell at a more reasonable price, or at a loss, or get
lost. We can have a real conversation about "price gouging" if you want, but it better involve bottles of water, gasoline, or food something like that. As someone watching the industry right now, there are plenty of joe averagepersons that don't have a lot buying guns just fine, despite the BS going on. My ex could still even afford a gun and a couple boxes of ammo if she really wanted one, and she barely has a pot to piss in.



Here you go again- you're making the assumption that every gun owner is your friend and wants to do you a favor. In business, outside of specific vendor > customer cultivated customer relationships, pretty much nobody does this. Most people that are selling shit are doing it to make a few bucks. Selling shit for nothing is a waste of time and is blood money.

Also, IMHO rape level"Profiteering" only works if you have a captive audience of idiots willing to overpay for stuff. 15-20 years ago gun consumers weren't quite as dumb as this as they are now. The point at which the consumer "gives up" and stops buying overpriced shit was way lower. I would term it "the point of abandonment". Consumers were more informed and tended to feed into hysteria less.

Also while we're on the topic of profiteering, how come nobody (and I'm not targeting YOU btw, just saying this in general) ever seems to complain about the ass raping they take outside of the gun industry? For example, the past few weekends I guarantee you that half of the price whining bitches on this forum bought fireworks in NH at 100-200%+ markup, or more. They import that shit for nothing and rape on it, because they have to, they only make lots of sales maybe 3 times a year total, with one holiday drowning out the other two. Nobody ever complains about fireworks prices, though. Or for that matter, Diamonds, another very rapey industry. On the other hand, everyone comes in and loses their shit when a gun shop makes $5 on a box of ammo. [rofl] Or bitches when some idiot overprices a tier 4 AR at like $2200. If the price is too rough kehds, then dont buy it! [rofl]

Let me give you a little treatise here on, in relative terms, how little things mean. Say I am an LGS, my distributor still eeks me out a couple cases of 9mm at about $200 a
case. I manage to get two cases and price it out at $16 a box and sell it all in one day. That's a whopping profit of $6 a box. Selling 2 cases of ammo made me $240 that day, which, if I'm lucky, might pay for two guys to work in the store off the cuff (and I'm not talking all the usual tax/medicabe/UE ins and all the other bullshit) Now those two cases of ammo didn't even
make me any profit but "kinda" paid for my helpers in the shop for the day. Whoopty do. I haven't even gotten to electricity, rent/lease (or property taxes) utilities, and all the other myriad of costs that come in running a business at retail. Yes, sure I will sell other stuff that day, but I'm not going to sell as much of it as I sold of 9mm.



I have great respect for TPNES and what he does, (because basically he is making a lot of flippers eat large silver platters of shit right now) but functionally what he is doing is no different than what the gougers/rape artists are doing in the classifieds, he's just way, way better at it than they are, but the principle is EXACTLY the same. Find something, make it available, profit.

(this should play when you call @TPNES on his cell phone.... )

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2elSNrRxus


I also think you give the flippers way too much credit. A lot of those people often have to eat shit, and sell stuff for less than what they originally listed it for. Especially as these things start
to drag on in time.



Lol all us gun markets are not open because of federal law, setting MA stupid bullshit aside, which for kids with big kid pants, really isn't a
thing, more of an annoyance. Guys like TPNES and a dozen other people regularly give access to people who want the big kid pants.

That said, food for thought- if it truly was an open market and we could buy guns and ammo on say, Amazon, and only Amazon and maybe a half other dozen retailers sold that
stuff..... and they were all configured to run off minimal profit (eg, extremely "market efficient" ) there would be no guns and no ammo for sale right now because it would all
be f***ing gone. [rofl] The "apex market predator" guys (like myself, and a ton of other people here) the guys that strike before the market turns to shit, if we get lucky enough, would have raped the entire market like the way that General Sherman raped Georgia. Scorched earth. There would be NOTHING for plebs/newbies/etc to buy at anything resembling a normal price. You would only be able to buy stuff from the people you hate the most- the flippers. Guys like me wouldn't be flipping, I like to generally hold onto my shit... but some other guys around here would flip a few things here and there to make money. It would be worse than it is now because the distribution would be even less controlled, and more chaos.


LGSes and others setting "shit prices" in a way is actually a necessary evil during this bullshit. It acts as a tamping mechanism to keep more product available for more
people. If the market was open and all sellers were minimal markup, there would be no product available except via flippers. At least the LGS making the 5 bucks a
box will put it on the shelf and sell it- because having shit to buy makes their customers happy.

Well f*** me sideways, I typed a response and something got assed up.

Basically it went something along these lines,

Costs should be built into pricing already.
All gougers suck, flippers can eat shit.
Don't change prices in front of customers.
Got enough friends already, don't need any more drama.
People suck and easily panic.
I'm okay with fireworks pricing(full disclosure I haven't bought any in close to thirty years) because it's a once a year thing and we can blow shit up while LEOs generally turn a blind eye(try that shit in Sept. and see if you stay out of jail).
Given what I've read here profits aren't in ammo/guns, they're in most of the other items. Kind of like buying a soda and candy bar at Cumbys after filling up.
TPNES rocks and should get a holiday named after him.
Again, flippers can eat shit.
New folks not in the know have no idea about TPNES and others and believe what ill informed dolts tell them(talking heads).
If Amazon sold ammo it'd all disappear before it ever made it to the storage bins, while Amazon employees have BG checks done the temps don't(saw a decent amount of gang ink in Stoughton and some in the Riva).
As much as it blows limits will also keep stock on the shelves.

I just want more folks getting into the hobby/sport, which won't happen if shit doesn't settle down wrt prices.

In the end I'm indifferent when it comes to things in Ma.. If TPTB were to pass a law tomorrow banning everything I'd simply pack up all my guns/ammo and either throw out or give away nearly everything else and point the car towards greener pastures.
 
Back
Top Bottom