Sig P226 versus Beretta 92fs

Given the contracts Beretta has had with the US military for the M9/M9A1 I can understand why it is cheaper. I have no issues with the 92 series Berettas but if you think about it the cost of R&D and the tooling has been subsidized by John Q taxpayer for a long time. Now yes the P226 has seen use with certain units, but nowhere on the scale of the Beretta. That does help trickle down to the consumers. The same is true with SIG and the SP2022 that has been adopted on a similar scale.



Now I am under no illusions that SIG isn't making a healthy profit, I'm just pointing out there is some degree of reason why the prices would be different.



Most people claimed that Beretta initially won the Army contract, over the Sig p226, due to price.
 
Prices definitely are different in different areas. All mine were in central NJ.

What's SIG pricing, if you don't mind me asking?




I understand that, but SIG had plenty of L/E contracts since the mid-1980s. Should have definitely caught up by now.

I bought my Brigadier new back at the tail end of the AWB... 2004ish. SIG classic pistol pricing has been noticeably higher since then... but most of their firearms are up there.

I do want to point out that the P320 can be had in a full size in about the same price point as Glocks. Either it didn't cost them anything to develop, or it is cheaper than a Glock to produce.



A basic Sig p226 will be right around $900 at competitively priced gun shops, here. Sometimes $50 less, on sale.
 
^the third possibility is that Glock has artificially kept their prices high for some time and that newer manufacturers are willing to accept lower profit per pistol to try to get market share. If SIG is doing it then no reason Glock can't do the same.

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Actually, it is quite the opposite. Glock's popularity was not really because it is an awesome design... it is because they pretty much gave them away to agencies (once development costs were made up, a Glock is under $40 in material). And they are pretty good with meeting specific demands... even when they aren't the ones being asked.

Take the FBI request for new sidearms. They wrote it to exclude Glock, and described the P320 pretty close... because they seemed to want them. What does Glock do? Builds a gun that meets those requirements, and undercuts SIG's pricing.

The problem with SIG is while you have polymer guns in the $500 range, and alloy/steel guns in the $650-$700 range... they still keep putting out $900+ pistols. H&K is another one (the VP9 is starting to get realistic, but the P30 and USP are just stupidly expensive for what you get). It is like they set their price point thinking they must be better by doing so.
 
Actually, it is quite the opposite. Glock's popularity was not really because it is an awesome design... it is because they pretty much gave them away to agencies (once development costs were made up, a Glock is under $40 in material).


I was going to post the very same thing, Glock has given away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of pistols and written it off on their marketing balance sheet. If they didn't they certainly wouldn't have suckered so many fools into the GAP, which was a joke from the start. :confused:
 
Actually, it is quite the opposite. Glock's popularity was not really because it is an awesome design... it is because they pretty much gave them away to agencies (once development costs were made up, a Glock is under $40 in material). And they are pretty good with meeting specific demands... even when they aren't the ones being asked.

Right, but you mentioned them being the same price
Screwball said:
I do want to point out that the P320 can be had in a full size in about the same price point as Glocks. Either it didn't cost them anything to develop, or it is cheaper than a Glock to produce.
so I assumed you were talking about the commercial market for private citizens and there the P320 and Glock are roughly the same price (and going off your $40 in materials estimate, at $500 to $550 there is quite the profit in that market). I'm aware of Glock undercutting folks for contracts (Glock: The Rise of America's Gun is a good read). While the P320 has also won some LE contracts I haven't seen evidence that it's solely based on cost. If it has been solely on cost then again I'd suggest they're running Glock's own playbook of accepting small margins to no profit at all just to get market share.

Again my comment about artificially keeping Glock prices high was relative to the prices they can be had at for private citizens. For a long time Glock only needed to be so cheap to undercut everyone else. Now with every company except for Beretta having released a polymer striker fired wonder for current production I imagine the competition is more stiff.

Screwball said:
H&K is another one (the VP9 is starting to get realistic, but the P30 and USP are just stupidly expensive for what you get). It is like they set their price point thinking they must be better by doing so.

IMO, HK, like Colt to an extent, trusted on military/large LE sales to carry the majority of the company business. This worked for them for a while until contracts started to become lean and they had cash flow problems serious enough to be downgraded by Moody's twice. My guess is the VP9 came about at a time when HK desperately needed some sales (you might remember the rebates HK offered on the P series pistols for some time and my guess is that was out of desperation to get cash as Moody's expressed concern about HK's ability to make liability payments).

It's worth noting that the HK P2000 was, according to HK, the single largest purchase of pistols by a US LE agency http://hk-usa.com/heckler-koch-defense-awarded-largest-pistol-contract-law-enforcement-history/. This was in 2004 when Glocks were fairly well established. So either DHS ICE really wanted those pistols to the point they ignored cost, or HK did try to be at least somewhat competitive in terms of contract price. If you do the $26.2 million divided by 65,000 pistols you get ~$403 a pistol, and that figure usually includes some maintenance and say magazines. That's likely still above the actual contract price of Glocks (if someone has a known figure that'd be great to see), but certainly well under what those pistols were sold for to private citizens for at least a decade. In the past year P2000 prices have been down to $500 on CDNN, but I remember buying them at $800 and thinking I was getting a bargain when other retailers wanted close to $900 :rolleyes:.
 
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While the P320 has also won some LE contracts I haven't seen evidence that it's solely based on cost. If it has been solely on cost then again I'd suggest they're running Glock's own playbook of accepting small margins to no profit at all just to get market share.



Again my comment about artificially keeping Glock prices high was relative to the prices they can be had at for private citizens.


With any government contract, cost is the final deciding factor. Same with vehicles.

The reason why you see some agencies going with a certain brand is because they write the request so specifically that they know what they are going to get.

While it may be Glock keeping their prices high, they are in a fair market range for guns of their type. It based other designs at the $500ish price point. SIG's classic line is an outlier... when you look at so many other offerings at $200 less.

It's worth noting that the HK P2000 was, according to HK, the single largest purchase of pistols by a US LE agency http://hk-usa.com/heckler-koch-defense-awarded-largest-pistol-contract-law-enforcement-history/. This was in 2004 when Glocks were fairly well established. So either DHS ICE really wanted those pistols to the point they ignored cost, or HK did try to be at least somewhat competitive in terms of contract price. If you do the $26.2 million divided by 65,000 pistols you get ~$403 a pistol, and that figure usually includes some maintenance and say magazines. That's likely still above the actual contract price of Glocks (if someone has a known figure that'd be great to see), but certainly well under what those pistols were sold for to private citizens for at least a decade. In the past year P2000 prices have been down to $500 on CDNN, but I remember buying them at $800 and thinking I was getting a bargain when other retailers wanted close to $900 :rolleyes:.


Actually, that was the request more than Glock not meeting them. INS/ICE have a long history of going with hammer fired pistols. Glock didn't offer, nor would they spend that amount of money to design one, so what are the options in a polymer pistol? The Beretta was released around the time the contract was finalized. FN released theirs after. Don't know if SIG submitted theirs... if they did, H&K underbidding them really puts it in perspective.

ICE is such a large sworn personnel agency that the purchase was the largest. Probably the one reason why Beretta made the PX4... but was too late.
 
Most people claimed that Beretta initially won the Army contract, over the Sig p226, due to price.

Most people claimed correctly. The Beretta 92 and the Sig P226 were the only 2 entries to pass the trials. Beretta was awarded the contract because their bid was less.
 
One thing about the Beretta is that I think that there is a good argument that part of the reason that it is less expensive than the Sig (even considering the Tritium sights on the Sig) is that Uncle Sam buys/bought so many of them that the per-unit cost is averaged lower. Just looking at the 92fs and the Sig I discern no fit-and-finish advantage to either gun. In other words they appear to be at the same quality point, which is to say both are high quality firearms.
 
Screwball said:
With any government contract, cost is the final deciding factor. Same with vehicles.

Of course, but it's not the only factor as your later comments illustrate.

Screwball said:
While it may be Glock keeping their prices high, they are in a fair market range for guns of their type. It based other designs at the $500ish price point. SIG's classic line is an outlier... when you look at so many other offerings at $200 less.

Besides Beretta, what other aluminum alloy framed American made pistols are there? S&W and Ruger both stopped making their options. I'm not denying SIG is more money than Beretta, but there aren't that many US based manufacturers in that market these days and I think we can agree polymer frames should be cheaper than aluminum alloy so it makes sense to compare like material with like. There are foreign manufactured options, but often some effort is made to buy US, even if the company is foreign owned but the pistols are made in the US. Plus with foreign made we get into issues of labor cost.

I don't think I ever claimed Glock's prices were as high as SIG's for their niche, I merely stated some reasons why companies newly entering the striker fired pistol market may be able to offer similar prices.

Screwball said:
Actually, that was the request more than Glock not meeting them. INS/ICE have a long history of going with hammer fired pistols. Glock didn't offer, nor would they spend that amount of money to design one, so what are the options in a polymer pistol? The Beretta was released around the time the contract was finalized. FN released theirs after.

ICE was formed in 2003, so I'm not sure you can say they had a long history of hammer fired pistols. INS had certainly been around a long time and you can use their history, although now they're called USCIS with ICE and CBP taking over roles that were previously part of INS.

It's also not out of the realm of possibility for government agencies that have used hammer fired handguns for decades (I'm including revolvers in that time estimate) to switch to striker fired handguns, i.e. the FBI in 1997 (although there I admit that you get into the desire to adopt the 40SW). My point is the precedence for a switch does exist, but you're right that it will depend on the agency and whether those writing the contracts for bidding have something particular in mind.

For that matter what information I can find would certainly indicate that Glock was involved in the competition for this particular contract.

As part of this press release http://www.defensereview.com/sigarms-and-heckler-kochhk-defense-win-major-pistol-contracts-with-dhs/ we see:
Approximately three million rounds of ammunition were fired through 690 handguns of 46 different models during the testing, which took almost four months to complete.
Given the number of models tested my guess is Glock did compete in the ICE contract as well, which makes sense as from what I can find for information right around when DHS was formed the US Customs Service, which would go on to become CBP, was using Glocks. You could argue that it was merely a formality and the testers were biased but that's more information than is presented (although I can accept that as possible). Some of the requirements seem right up Glock's alley:
*DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, PERFORMANCE DESCRIPTION FOR A SERVICE PISTOL PROCUREMENT

3.2 Operation: The pistol shall be an action that provides smooth and consistent trigger pull for the first shot and all consecutive shots
3.3.7 Manual external safety lever: The pistol shall not be equipped with a manual external safety.
3.3.8 Decocking lever or device: The pistol shall not be equipped with a decocking lever or device.
3.3.9 Cocking lever or device: The pistol shall not be equipped with a cocking lever.
3.3.10 Grip Safety: The pistol shall not be equipped with a Grip Safety.

Screwball said:
Don't know if SIG submitted theirs... if they did, H&K underbidding them really puts it in perspective.

SIG did win a substantial contract from DHS for $23.7 million at the same time as HK http://www.defensereview.com/sigarms-and-heckler-kochhk-defense-win-major-pistol-contracts-with-dhs/
They also won a contract with the Coast Guard as well http://www.shootingtimes.com/handguns/handgun_reviews_sig070606/
 
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Besides Beretta, what other aluminum alloy framed American made pistols are there? S&W and Ruger both stopped making their options. I'm not denying SIG is more money than Beretta, but there aren't that many in that market these days. There are foreign made options, but often some effort is made to buy US.

CZ immediately comes to mind as an all-metal semi-auto that is available even in California. All-steel and made not in America but rather in Czech Republic. Good guns though.

 
CZ immediately comes to mind as an all-metal semi-auto that is available even in California. All-steel and made not in America but rather in Czech Republic. Good guns though.

Right, and I love CZ but as my comment clarified they're not US made and I'm not aware of any LE contracts they have in the US. Not that LE contracts are all that matters, it's just what was being discussed.
 
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