How much is your gun collection worth?

R

Robinson

New member
I've been a private collector for 15 years and over time have accumulated about $65,000 in firearms, mostly through buying gun collections. I'm just curious how many other serious collectors are out there. Do you have any special tactics to find your firearms?
 
To each his own, but I’m not sure it’s a good idea to let the world wide web know someone has tens of thousands of dollars in firearms stored in their home. Yea, most here use an alias name, and don’t show our home state, but still…..
 
Serious gun collecting is all about having the interest, knowledge and resources to acquire specific firearms for your collection. With the on line auctions, one can do a pretty good job of picking up interesting stuff.

If particular dealers who deal in your area of interest much pick something up, it is to their benefit to give you a call and make a quick sale. But you have to develop a relationship to some degree first to even get the call.

The special stuff is what makes a collection ultimately. Essentially you are trying to put together a museum worthy collection.

Interest and resources can change over time. That impacts collecting a lot.
 
This thread reminded me of the insurance commercial I saw watching the Sugar Bowl. A couple announced on social media they were attending the game in New Orleans and a thief came in and auctioned all their property during the game.

BTW, my gun collection is worth about $20.
 
$65,000 worth of guns in 15 years, lets just brag about that online lol. OMG, how many normal people really have that much in guns? I could only dream about that.
 
That only sounds like a lot of money to us poor folks.
There are collections posted here worth way north of 65K.
 
Social media is the last place to discuss value of anything you own. If you think you are anonymous on the web you need to rethink that. A clever person can track you down. Remember target? How many places have you used that login? have any of them been hacked? and that is just one example. For all those interested mine is worth 2 cents.
 
Depends.....the value at the retail? or wholesale? We would all like to think they're worth what the top of the market is, but that's rarely what happens. Only party really interested in the value is the IRS when it transfers hands.

Thanks to commodity prices increasing and world monetary fluctuations...my collection is worth far more than what I paid. Given time the collection could double and triple....or anti-gun laws could render it an entirely useless scrap pile.
 
you could drop $65,000 on ONE NFA firearm, if you had the cash.

It would be a lot of money, but a poor "collection".
 
Couple thousand. I don't collect guns as investments, so I've never really kept track of it. It's definitely a plus of the hobby that they hold value well and are fairly liquid, but I get stuff that I think is interesting/neat without much thought for dollar value. My single most valuable items are my Colt Python and my Daniel Defense and associated accessories, probably about $1,200 and $1,600-1,800 in market value, respectively.
 
I have a spread sheet that shows how much the guns cost me, originally.
I have Quicken to to tell me my net worth.

2% is the ratio.

But guns and guitars appreciate at 3% compounded annually.
My median time since I acquired a the gun is 2003.

So I that would make it closer to 3% in guns.
 
another thing to consider is that the dollar value is a transitory thing. As is the actual value of the dollars themselves.

Your guns are worth what they will bring, on the day you sell them. Sell when demand is low, you get less..etc. And, of course, it depends on what the guns are.

If you have a safe full of pre 1900 Marlins or Winchesters its a different matter than a safe full of AR variants. OR the kind of collection many of us have, which is more of an accumulation of "working" guns.

Historical collectables generally increase in value at a slow steady rate, although a surge in popular interest due to a movie or an anniversary of an era (50yrs, 100yrs, etc.) often creates a large spike which generally turns into a plateau, moving the expected price to a new higher level, sometimes in a sharp jump.

Guns like ARs are in a much more volatile market. I don't know how anyone could come up with a reliable predictor for their future market value. The 1984 AR variant that I bought new for $450, I sold in 1994 for $900, which I figured was 100% profit, plus I got to use the gun for 10 years!

Today I could get a replacement for less than the $900, I got then, but only a few years ago I couldn't. And in the future? They might be banned, Meaning either hyper expensive (cost, permits, fees, time, effort, etc) or they might be worthless (no legal ownership allowed).

We work hard to keep the total ban scenario as far away as we can, but it always hovers around these days, as a possibility that cannot be totally ignored.
 
I think it is very important to know what your collection is worth. Too often I hear, 'it's not about the money'. Yes, it is about the money. All of us only own the guns temporarily, and when we pass away, our collections will pass onto the next owner, which is usually an heir. We should have an idea of what our collections are worth, for the benefit of our heirs. Even if our direct heirs don't sell the collection, someday, someone will.

In my city, there was a gentleman who passed away about two years ago. This gentleman had a huge NFA collection. When he passed away, the family sold the collection for a 'good six figure amount', thinking that it was a lot of money. I saw part of the collection and tried to buy parts of it, but the holding dealer said that deal had already been closed. The 'good six figure amount' was grossly undervalued, from what I saw, and the buyer later bragged that he flipped the collection for a seven figure amount.

I am an NFA collector, and I have a sizable collection that is growing (that is guarded by a 24 hr surveillance camera and large bolted safe). I am sure to tell my family and spouse that if one day, if should ever pass away prematurely, that the generic looking AR guns in the safe, which if you google their used value comes back at $500, has a little one ounce piece of metal hidden in each of the guns that makes it worth $26,000 each.

I have nightmares about my heirs trying to figure out, 'what kind of gun this is', and then googling the image. That HK MP5K? It says here right on this airsoft website that it's worth $299! Bingo! *edit: for those who don't collect NFA guns, the MP5K with registered sear is going for around $32,000 as of this writing.

We take for granted our knowledge of guns. For those people who are not interested in the shooting sports, to them, a gun is just a mass of plastic/metal or plastic/wood/metal or wood/metal.
 
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I won't say what I have or what it's worth but I will say my most valuable gun is about what a set of tires cost. I could also say my collection is worth less than 1/5th of my home, which a single wide trailer on very little property. One of the NFA ARs mentioned is worth more than my home if that helps you guys out. I don't consider what I have a real collection anyways, I'm not what one would call a gun collecter. The OP says he has $65,000 in guns which for a collection isn't very much. That could be 1 gun. For me though, I'm a fan of mostly cheap guns. Good thing too since I can't afford to even to shoot the ones I have. I do like unique guns and I do have a few but they are cheap. And I will never own a safe queen.
 
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