A friend of mine is a gunsmith/gun dealer, and he is going to be getting in a lot of 400 rifles from an individual. He has been told the lot is all military bolt actions and semi autos, but he has to wait and see what actually comes in.

He is busy enough as it is, and this lot is obviously going to be a lot of work. Are there people, groups or dealers out there that buy lots of 5+ rifles at a time? What is the best venue to sell these? Advertising, listing, boxing, and shipping single guns is too time consuming.

Any thoughts or ideas are much appreciated.

Of course there are dealers and people that well by them by the lot.

His he taking them in on consignment.


For fee I would come and sort them and catalog them I am sure others would to

Did he buy them as one lot sight unseen.


But they still kind of have to know what they are.

Until they are catalog of some type how would one know.


The best way is to inventory them break them into lots and sell them.

Hire an auction company to do it for you.

I guess I wonder that as a dealer he doesn't know how to market 400 guns. unless they are scrap there's money to be made. 400 guns really isn't that many

Yet another example where at least the state where the poster/activity is located to help people formulate an answer.

Half way across the country and there may be little interest, next door . . . Is yet another matter.

Besides location the total lack of detail of what really is included in the "inventory" make it harder to formulate an answer/plan.

quote:

Originally posted by TCLouis:
Yet another example where at least the state where the poster/activity is located to help people formulate an answer.

Half way across the country and there may be little interest, next door . . . Is yet another matter.

Besides location the total lack of detail of what really is included in the "inventory" make it harder to formulate an answer/plan.

You are right, I should have included my location. I didn't leave that out intentionally, it was just an oversight. I am in Massachusetts.

As I said, quite clearly in my original post, we had no idea what was actually included. If I had that information, I would have included it. We picked them up yesterday, and it was mainly M98s, Arisakas, Enfields, MAS, and Russian 1891's. Unfortunately many guns are missing the bolts. We are trying to catalog everything now.

Some rifles belonging to a semi-concious collector may have significant value and be worth marketing one at a time. If they are just compulsive buys by an accumulator they will probably be a chore to unload.

Several years ago the owner of a local gun shop would periodically buy out other gun shops, sometimes several states away. He would fill racks and racks with the guns and shelves and bins with accessories and parts. The items were priced to MOVE. But he was careful to hand pick any special items and exclude those. He also had one rack of guns that were set aside for a sealed bid auction. Then he would advertise a clearance sale and go through nearly all of it in a few weeks.

Every time I could, I visited the store when he did this. I found some amazing parts, including an unused and in the white tapered octagonal barrel with integral quarter rib, sling eye, and front sight base that had been made by Jim Wisner. I probably purchased six to eight firearms through his sales.

The dealer could have made more per firearm if he was willing to keep things on the shelf for a long time. But he explained to me that the quick sales generated the cash he needed to make the big buyout sales.

Dealer might want to check into working with an auction company that can use Proxibid.com to sell the rifles. Proxibid allows someone with a computer to bid in realtime for items being sold. Recall a Las Vegas area pawnshop that sold off the Darnell military rifle collection using Proxibid. Number of rifles sold was in the thousands and ammo in the tens of thousands...took around 6 auctions held about 6 wks apart to sell off the Darnell collection.