Saturday - October 18, 2008

Gun Show review

Meh. What a let down. There must have been 300 vendors at this show out in Allentown PA today, and my guess is 2000 guys walking around looking at stuff. And about 11 women, 7 of whom were working behind the vendor tables. And 1 who was a rentacop. Not one vendor had any new reloading supplies. Very few vendors even had new rifles or pistols for sale. The only ammo available was out of code milsurp stuff by the wooden case full, which is great if you have a milsurp rifle to feed.

Aside from the one vendor who did beautiful engraving, and the one vendor who had some first class antique rifles in A-1 condition for sale, this show was more like a flea market than a gun show. Sure, there were lots of guns for sale. Every rotted and rusted old double barrel shotgun in America. Those odd little Stevens single shot .22s from the turn of the previous century were there in abundance. I saw more Spencer carbines than I think were ever produced. And a lot of forged Trapdoor Springfields. I happen to know that rifle inside and out, and can spot the fakes and the ones built up from spare parts a mile away. And I saw so many old rifles that had been molested. I’d like to say raped. People get some old gun and try to “fix ‘er up” by sanding all the patina off the stocks, sanding them down to bare wood, then slapping a coat of spar varnish on them and spray painting the barrels gloss black. Shudders. Horrors. Then they think the thing has collector value because it’s old but still “looks good” and they slap on a premium price tag. No, sorry. I won’t give you a dollar for that thing now. I lost count of how many M1s I saw that had been subjected to this, and worse - there were more “tanker” Garands at this show than ever saw production. Forgeries folks. Somebody took a hacksaw to a fine battle rifle and produced this abortion, just in case a sucker came along.

I saw one really great deal, a Ruger GP-100 .357 with a 4” barrel with the full underlug for $395. I forget what I paid for mine when I bought it new 10 years ago, but I think it was more than twice that amount. So there may have been some good deals on pistols, if you knew your product and knew your prices. But I still don’t think Markarovs or any of the Soviet bloc WWII rifles or handguns that the reds have dumped on the market by the millions have any collector value, and never will. That’s why they make good $150 pistols, not $800 investment pieces. Same goes for SKS rifles. It’s a cheap chicom POS trunk gun. That’s all it will ever be. $175 tops, $120 on average. Not $600. No. Flicking. Way. The only good Moisin-Nagant rifles with collector value are the ones made in America and shipped over for the tsar way back in the day, and those have been snapped up ages ago. The 1943 version of that clunky rifle is just another trunk gun.

And I saw a very bothersome amount of WWII Nazi gear. Table after table after table. What up with that? No, I don’t want a “genuine” SS overcoat. Nor a reproduction Hitler Youth dagger. And if you have a nice K-98 Mauser for sale, fine. The ones made pre-war are superb guns. But the absolute last rifle on earth I would spend money on would be one with a proven provenance that it was built for the SS in a concentration camp. No. Never. Not in my worst nightmares. That one has evil built in, and I wouldn’t want it in my town, much less my own home. And besides, Mitchell’s Mausers has the same rifle in mint condition, for a much better price, without that “wonderful and amazing” provenance. So it was no real surprise to me that most of the guys were just walking around, not lining up to buy stuff.

I met one of my readers. How about that? Since all of my NRA shirts are at the dry cleaners (yeah right) and my McCain Palin gear wasn’t clean, I wore my only other firearms related shirt, my IMAO Top 10 Gun Safety Tips one. Some guy behind a table looks at me and says “I know that blog!” and we get into a short conversation. I told him that I run the Barking Moonbat Early Warning System blog. “Hey I read that one sometimes. You’re that guy from England?” (Peiper has minions, damn his hide!!) No, I’m Drew458. I sort of own the place. And he tells me his user name. And I forgot what it was. Sorry guy!!

I saw many many McCain Palin signs, shirts, and stickers. The ONLY Obama things I saw were signs around, say a Barrett .50 BMG rifle, that said “Buy it now before Obama makes it too late!”

It sure was nice having a visit with America for a few hours. Now I’m back in New Jersey. Time for lunch, laundry, and getting the weekly papers together for bowling league. At least I’m mostly over this damn cold by now. Yay drugs, better living through chemistry!

Posted by Drew458     on 10/18/2008 at 01:13 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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