Investing In Your Gun Collection

By Patrick Sweeney

Knowledge is power. Knowledge is wealth. The Dutch became rich world travelers because, early in the Age of Exploration, they found out how to get to and acquire the goods the wealthy would pay money for. Today, we take for granted that everything we need (or want) to know can be found on the internet. Before the web, we had books. Some of us still do.

Though it started by Jim Cook as “Barry Fain’s Private Blue Book of Gun Values” in 1981, Steve Fjestad took it over in late 1982 for the book’s third edition. I was working at gun shops in those days, and in order to make a living we had to know what firearms sold for and then buy them for less. We gained this knowledge by cruising gun shows, visiting other gun shops, memorizing vast amounts of information and paying for auction results. We’d even photocopy and trade (or sell) those results because knowledge was valuable.

Details mattered. I have a pre-World War II Winchester Model 70 that I paid a post-war price for back in the 1980s. I recognized that the safety pivoted the “wrong” way. A short time later, I got …Read the Rest

Source:: Guns and Ammo