Milsurp After Hours

Anybody who collects anything enthusiastically and pays any attention to online messageboards soon notices a group mind set in deciding what is more desirable at any given time and, also, what is not. It's the same way in most everything collectible that I have any experience in. Function is not so important as the incidentals of production or history. Off the top of my head I can list a few of what I have surmised by group think over the last half dozen or more years as a few guns that could be singled out as examples of long time desirable guns.

Some that always seem to stay in the "very desirable" class would include, among others, these:

East German Makarov. Looks just like the Bulgarian or whatever other "Iron Curtain" country versions but try buying one. I'm lucky in that I bought mine twenty years ago before the notion took hold.

Mosin Nagants with any Finn connection have always been...."special". Add in some NEW or Remington marks on M91's and that's a notch better moving them to "very special".

Systema Colts, being made in South America under the Colt license are particularly valuable. I bought one years ago that looks like hell, but more valuable than any of the lessor versions of 1911 in new pistols made in identical design.

Russian SKS. A Russian manufacture SKS is valued at about two or three times as much as the best Yugo version you can find.

On the other hand some get desirable and maybe bring big money ...and then maybe a boat load of them are found some place...and then they hit the skids. For instance:

CZ52. Ugly Czech automatic in 7.62x25. Twenty or so years ago they were hard to come by and expensive. Then several boat loads came in to the US in the late 90's and you could buy one for noticeably less than $200 up until a few years ago. Now they have disappeared from the usual sources ...but they haven't risen much in price.

Enfield No. 5 Jungle Carbines are another one of the once valuable and desirable. They went for money in the high hundreds ....until the boat arrived from Sumatra, or where ever.... and they went down for a while to around $160. Now they have been dispensed and dispersed and the prices are rising slowly to near about half of what they were twenty years ago. But they aren't in the super group any longer.



And then....there are the bottom feeders. 91/30's, Turk Mausers, Carcano's, French anything. Never were high in the pecking order and none super stars in the collecting world. However........I wish I had cashed in my American Airline and Kodak stock years ago and bought as many of any of them as the money would have provided.

So....what's your most desireable list? Got any theory?

Ok... to kick this ball further down the field to see if anybody wants to play.

If the important notion in collecting firearms is as an investment, then what we are doing seems like buying stocks that pay no dividend. The more desirable the "stock" often the higher the price per share. The idea works ok for Apple which pays no dividend. Big investors would rather pay capital gains on a big profit from sales of a stock than pay a larger tax rate on dividends. Guns pay no dividends so their ultimate value will equal a sales price that fluctuates over time. A $1000 desirable and relatively hard to find piece will probably hold its value and go up over time. But... in investing it is the percentage of upward climb that counts. If you have a $1000 worth of guns you paid $100 each for and in six years they go to $150 each and the $1000 gun goes to $1200.00, the ten $50 gains on the lessor guns would be more profitable. So.... collecting the expensive most popular guns may not be the best strategy as an investment.

If pride of ownership and fascination with desired examples is important, then maybe the most desirable guns would be the way to go. The pride of ownership, and telling about it, is part of any hobby. Money value will take a second place consideration to this kind of collector in the long run.

If getting a first hand experience firing historical weapons is most important, then cheaper is better. If Mosin Nagants are cheap you can collect one of several versions and fire them all. The down side is that storage becomes a problem after you have run through the less "desirable" but cheaper priced Enfields, Mausers, Carcano's , etc., and if you sell out you have to sell many instead of a few. The up side is that the extra effort needed to dispose of larger numbers could provide more actual "profit", over time, when your interests shift to something else.

And then there is the collector who is like what people in the car business call the "car queer". Some people just go nuts over most guns they see and just WANT them, just like people go to the local car company just to be next to new cars and take a test drive....when all they can afford is generally a whiff of the new car smell.