Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Panic is so unbecoming...

A commenter at Sebastian's place reports that Numrich is out of magazines for No.1 Mk.III SMLE rifle.

I'm dubious that they ever really had them. It is a well-established fact that the Brits made, like, 10,000,000 SMLEs and 10,000,001 magazines.

The lone spare SMLE magazine in the world gets sold from one cranky old gun show dealer to another, who slathers it in fresh cosmoline and what appears to be tobacco juice, and marks it up another $5 before burying it under a bunch of rusty Turkish bayonets on the back corner of his table, next to a cigar box full of uniform buttons, an overpriced FN 1910 that someone has chromed like a Studebaker bumper, and a small stack of dog-eared Chick tracts.

Meanwhile, wizardpc reports sighting an $800 Mosin at a fun show.

McThag correctly points out that Mosin collecting has passed the collecting of H&R top-break revolvers in popularity and respectability and is rapidly closing in on collecting Latin American Mauser variants as the thirty-seventh most popular field of firearms curating, and therefore $800 might not be out of line for some of the more obscure Finnish variants.

Meanwhile, I will point out a basic bit of Capitalism 101: If Seller Sam asks $100 for a 50rd box of Remchester .22LR, and Buyer Bob gives him $100 for it,  then the price of a 50rd box of Remchester .22LR in that place, at that time, is $100.

35 comments:

staghounds said...

And perhaps more importantly, the value of $1 is one half of a round of Remchester .22LR in that place, at that time.

Anonymous said...

There was an article in a recent Shotgun News about a "$1000 Mosin-Nagant." It was an all original-still-in-cosmo US marked NEW M91. I'm not particulary a fan of the Mosin, but I realize not every one is a counterbored arsenal refurb 91/30.

Rob

fast richard said...

I have two or three spare SMLE magazines that I bought from Numrich two or three decades ago. Maybe I should take them to a gun show and see what I can swap them for.

DaddyBear said...

And now we know why I've been staying away from gun shows and the like for a while. Too rich for my blood, and there's nothing I need that much. Want? Yes. Need? Not as much as I need my head, which might be separated from my shoulders if I go come home with something that cost so much.

AuricTech said...

Meanwhile, I will point out a basic bit of Capitalism 101: If Seller Sam asks $100 for a 50rd box of Remchester .22LR, and Buyer Bob gives him $100 for it, then the price of a 50rd box of Remchester .22LR in that place, at that time, is $100.

The good thing about this is that, when Purchaser Patty comes by a bit later, Seller Sam probably still has some Remchester .22LR in stock. Had Seller Sam not increased his selling price from $5/box, Buyer Bob might have bought all 20 boxes Seller Sam had on hand, and Purchaser Patty would have no new ammo at all. The price signal also lets Distributor Dave know that there's a shortage of Remchester .22LR in that area. Finally, hypothetical situations like this let Alliterative AuricTech expound on why he really doesn't care for terms like "price gouging." ;-)

Woodman said...

Thankfully this fun show trip is going to be a browse and tinker trip.

I want some jerky, and I need a couple of things for my 'I just fucking shot myself" bag. And I'd like to check out the doomsday seeds guys again.

If there is a real purty Mosin laying around, I might pick it up for sub $175. Anything else I'm looking for is going to be super over-priced. Maybe a couple boxes of 9mm.

global village idiot said...

The last gun show I remember going to was the Indy 1500 about a year-and-a-half ago. Crowded as all get-out, haven't been back since.

The current silliness is troubling, certainly. I'll start really worrying, however, when some Congresscritter starts banging his gums about closing the "Hamfest Loophole."

gvi

Ken said...

At the show near Cleveland last weekend, M91/30s were going for a little south of $150, but AKs were fetching (or at least asking) about $1,200. Clearly I missed a memo somewhere along the line.

Steve Skubinna said...

The Swiss K31 has one magazine per rifle, which is serialized to match the bolt. And receiver. And hand guards. They must have had a good reason for making it detachable, but you're probably not going to grab a bunch of them unless somebody is taking them out of rifles.

JustSomeGuy said...

Tam, AuricTech:

I may have to steal your example/explanation for future use. I think I'm too wordy with my own...

Thanks,
JSG

Murphy's Law said...

If Seller Sam creates the "shortage" by running out any buying every last box of Remchester from every other seller just so that he can corner the market and keep it all out of circulation until he gets his artificually high price, then Seller Sam needs to be beaten in an alley by Billy Bat and Pete Pipe.

And if Seller Sam is allowed to do that, what do we say when someone like George Soros or the Obama Administration does it?

global village idiot said...

Lee-Enfields were issued with one magazine. It was detachable only for the purpose of cleaning, not for reloading.

gvi

Ed said...

Instead of looking for Swiss K31 spare magazines, you can spend your time looking for the funky resin impregnated cardboard and tinned metal stripper clips that you can then load with the loose packaged ammunition.

Angus McThag said...

Lee designed that magazine to be used like we use them today. That the Brits did not is not a matter of design but of implementation.

I remember at a gun show when my SMLE Mk III* was new to me that perhaps a spare magazine would be a good idea.

They were thin on the ground in 1996 too.

One vendor (read only one) had two for sale for $30 a pop. And a SMLE for $70. The funny thing about it was one of the mags on the table had the rifle's serial number. I was sorely tempted to talk him down on the rifle for being mismatched and buying that magazine...

Woodman said...

"And if Seller Sam is allowed to do that, what do we say when someone like George Soros or the Obama Administration does it?"

Seller Sam is allowed to do that, it's called cornering the market. You can lose your shirt if you do it wrong, and even if you do it right you can still lose your shirt unless it was a going out of business sale.

If someone tried to buy all of a subset of a particular ammo, or even every AR and AK variant in a gun show or city and then turned around and asked outrageous prices for them, they better hope they got them all and can dump them quick. That's exactly what causes extra inventory to get released, or people to travel to sell things, or even factories to get tooled up.

If Indy had a shortage of 9mm ammo and Don's Guns was the only place you could find any, with the Tula 9mm ammo running $100 a box, because he bought it all up, pretty sure at least two things would happen ASAP. Everyone with unopened boxes of 9mm ammo would crawl out of the woodwork to sell their "spare" ammo, and Bob's Guns in Louisville would be sending cases to Pop Guns on consignment at $75 a pop, which is still enough room for the gun show people to sell them for $60 and make a mint. Meanwhile, Don has gotten even more local animosity from the "gun crowd" and has made maybe enough from the scheme to afford the storage from all the extra ammo in his back room now.

And if it kept up, someone somewhere would make "Indy" loads to sell here off the back of a truck.

Ed Foster said...

Only 37th? Dang! You mean not everybody gets as soggy-eyed as I do over a really clean '95 Chilean? Especially since I saw one shoot about minute of angle at a measured half mile, with issue sights?

No, I wasn't shooting it, dammit. Eric Timrud was, with neck annealed and remanufactured original 1902 UMC cases and round nosed bullets.

Wonder what it felt like to be somebody in kilts, getting shot at by Boers armed with those things?

And I have a full military FN 1935long rifle in 7mm that shoots about as well, with the commercial crest and bright blue that makes it the gentlemen adventurer model, and a Mexican 1910 that looks like an 03-A3, and a ..................

Robert Langham said...

How much did they want for those chick tracts?

Steve Skubinna said...

ed 3:38, I do have about a dozen of those funky stripper... uh, they aren't actually clips. But yes, they are odd, although they do work and are a lot more durable than they look. Guess the Swiss insist on doing things their own way.

Anonymous said...

Listen, goldbug rumors and TEOTWAWKI hypes are the reason I can get $2600 right now for a bag of junk silver coins containing $2100 of silver...

Gold, silver, mags, lead, 'taters, or twinkies...whatever the market will bear is the market price. BTW it ain't price gouging unless it's an emergency, and it's unlikely your life depends on getting a bag of coins, a box of bullets, or a sugar fix.

Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances, buy low sell high, call it what you will; I call it capitalism.

PB

staghounds said...

Wait a minute, it's buy low, sell high?

That explains a lot of things!

Anonymous said...

Name three.

Anonymous said...

Anyone notice that seven is one less than eight?

Mike said...

Friend of mine sold a Mosin for around $3800. No, it wasn't Finnish. It was Russian.

Any guesses which model? Google is cheating.

Tam said...

Mike,

Er... Cossack '91?

Vaarok said...

M1907 Carbine or a Finn 91Rv cav carbine.

Chalkie said...

There might be something to the pricing out there. I refuse to believe that my Stevens Arms Crackshot is worth what people try to sell it for.

Anonymous said...

Dear Tamara,

I have a name brand AR-15 lower that I can't find parts to complete. I notice these lowers are routinely fetching over $800.00 at the auction site.

Should I hang on to the lower till all this madness dies down and parts become available? Or, should I sell high and get a long range hunting scope with the proceeds?

Sincerly,

Flummoxed in Fresno

Blackwing1 said...

I paid $80 for a couple of Chinese SKS's back in the day. I wonder what they're going for now?

Ed Foster said...

Bygoneblog: E-mail me at edward@continentalmachinetool.com and I'll set you up with a lower kit for about 50 bucks. A little patience, a bitty hammer, and a small drift will have it working in 15 minutes.

staghounds said...

Mike, I'll bite- was it a U. S. Property marked one?

Anonymous said...

"...it's buy low, sell high?"

Ideally. Quite often it's the opposite; that's where the take yer chances part comes in.

Capitalism; it's a beautiful thing, but it ain't easy. If it was, everybody'd be doing it.

PB

Anonymous said...

For Enfield Magazines you might try Springfield Sporters in Penn Run, Pa They have at one time claimed to be the largest supplier of Enfield Parts.
They have unloaded some of their stuff to Numrich IIRC. Good Luck. DAVE S.

Woodman said...

Blackwing, SKSs go for $350 as of six months ago.

I wish I had gotten into this hobby when I was single. More disposable income, and everything was cheaper.

Cheap M1s, $50 Mosins, $80 SKSs, hell, I wouldn't need any guns now at all.

Anonymous said...

I apologize, I have the spare smelly magazine and will release it back to the wild immediately. Or, as soon as I can get into the fun show on the same calendar day I get in line for it....

Sigivald said...

As I said over there, it's like finding a magazine for an AG-42: nobody ever had them in quantity.

They weren't meant to be carried as spares or anything...