Milsurp After Hours

I remember Tuco before it turned into gunboards. That old line to line message board from at least twenty years ago. You hit one post and all responses had to be clicked on one at a time to see what anybody was saying seems really archaic now days. But...it drew lots of traffic. It was by far the top dog. Probably it drew as much or more traffic than anything since. After a while there were a lot of spinoffs.

Parallax Bill? It was the next big milsurp site. I was a moderator there for a short while before I started this site. It was an ezboard site, like this one was for a while. Parallax Bill even had one devoted to Turk Mausers as well for a while that was popular when boat loads of those Turks came in country. There were a lot of ezboard sites. Remember the "Ranger " who used to get in all sorts of flame wars? Then ezboard, making money hand over fist, produced a lot of spinoffs until ezboard took a crap and ruined a bunch of them..and almost including this one.

Now there are some new ones that I'm not all that familiar with. The craze has subsided in the world of facebook and the lack of cheap milsurps.

Some popular sites got into a sort of give me money thing like tv evangelists. "Give me some money because this is costing plenty or we are going away". They kinda ruined it ...I think. Then the site host continual pop up thing that got into another source of revenue for the actual host provider on what took the place of ezboard, including being able to pay them off to not see the advertisement. That blackmail greed took its toll too.

Remember the sacred cow thing? Some regular posters on sites got special privilege as sort of declared experts that you couldn't argue with... Dr. somebody from Australia comes to mind and another guy who was an expert on Swiss guns who is passed on now who had a sideline business who posted on this site a time or two but left when I deleted an advertisement post of something he was selling. They were only minor potentates. I won't mention the worst of them.

There are a few sites left that have good followings I imagine. Duncan knows at least one that he talks about in the chats from time to time.

One of my main moderators here left to be a main fixture at a British based site. He was a big part of why Milsurp After Hours took off. I kinda miss Adam. Don't know how that site he was drawn to is doing now. I hope well.

I remember Tuco and Parallax Bill back when I first got into Mosin rifles, my first milsurps back in 2004.
This is the only forums I have been to for several years. Although I sometimes check Gunboards
just to see what's for sale and rough prices.

.

Gunboards still is the most active site by far. Here, the last crash that wasn't fixed for a long time about killed this site after what was already a steep downward slide. But ...it's been a good down hill ride and I expect will continue until the next unforeseen crash eventually kills it.

The first milsurp site I went on was Gun and Knife run by a chap called Mark Bitting (?). The site closed after he died. I used to look at the Parallax Bill site and a few others. The only ones I look at regularly now are this one and Gunboards. I sometimes look at a couple of others but not often.
Regards
Peter.

Joined here on Fri Oct 06, 2006 9:08 pm
I have joined many other boards / forums but 2 or three were regular visits.

Guncollectorsforum.com
Castboolits
Lee Enfield Rifle Association

Since 2008 I have concentrated more on British Military Firearms from the Victorian era and so now spend my time on The British Militaria Forums, Martini Henry and a lot of Facebook sites and associated places.

I am now one of the ;
which is where my interest will take me as far as collecting is concerned.

I spent most of my time here and at Parallax Bill's.

Swiss Rifles . com was my place for years. One of the main contributors over there was Guisan. He was the one that would post here sometimes. He could come off sounding like a know-it-all but he really was a wealth of info. He ran a Swiss milsurp business on the side. The most helpful thing was that he took requests to hunt for parts while he was visiting Switzerland or various firearm sales around Europe. Found me some obscure things over the years.

After he died the site sort of went into a malaise that just went on and on. This coupled with the rifles being more and more expensive and the postal shoots stopping.... It felt like we weren't doing anything anymore.

-Fluffy