A Texas gun store owner writes . . .
I was tagged in a thread about a gentleman who’d gotten upset that a dealer had only offered him $500 for an HK USP that he wanted to sell. He followed up by saying that he later sold it to another dealer for $670 or so, using that as proof that the original dealer was trying to screw him. Or something.
A couple of things to keep in mind when selling a gun:
First off, I tell nearly every customer who comes in that I am not the person to sell to if you want to get the most money. For that, you will have to sell your gun privately. Giving your friend a super-good deal on a gun will likely net you more money and make your friend happy. Win-win.
Outside of that, selling on a local online marketplace (Texas Gun Trader, for instance) will also net you more money, but that comes at a cost. For one, there’s an obvious safety issue in selling to a random stranger online. Precautions need to be taken there.
Secondly, that can easily be a very big headache. Sorting through the bad actors (felons who can’t legally own a gun) and dealing with people who throw insultingly low offers at you can be annoying.
That’s why a dealer is beneficial. We are safe and we are fast. As such, expect to pay a premium for that.
Additionally, we also have to make a profit on selling the gun, and every gun that comes in the door is a gamble. Good dealers will be able to sort out the bad stuff from the good stuff quickly, but we’ve all gotten ourselves underwater on something. Or at least just barely keeping our heads above water.
All of which brings us to the next thing: how much of a premium should you expect to pay for the convenience of selling to a gun store?
If you want cash, most dealers will pay you around half of what they think they can sell the gun for. I generally think I can sell a gun for more than a private sale, so you’ll likely get 60% to 70% of what you’ll get selling it privately.
Sometimes we pay more. I tend to be pretty aggressive on buying GLOCKs because they magically disappear within a day or two. Others…not so much. I say this as I eye the stack of Tacops P320s that I paid $50 each for.
Why do we buy so low (besides needing to mark the gun up to make a profit)? Well, even though we can check the function of the gun in-store, unless we have a shooting range, we can’t fully check it out. We can get close, but there’s always a wild card.
On top of that, we have no idea how many people you’ve murdered with that gun. I say that only as a partial joke. I don’t make a habit of buying guns that have killed people (there are two exceptions to that, but in twelve years, those were the only ones), but the fact is we don’t have the ability to verify much at all about the history of the gun. Nor do we know if it’s stolen.
Contrary to popular belief, we don’t have a magical “stolen gun database” to check against. There are a few things we can do, but they’re not all-encompassing and they’re only good for checking a fraction of the reported stolen guns.
Combine all of that with the used market being very down right now, and selling your guns can be rather disappointing.
My best advice: if you don’t need the money, don’t sell right now. Wait it out and see how things go. It feels like things are starting to come back around, but it’s still pretty rough out there. So be patient, sell privately, or just wait until prices pick back up. You’ll be better off in the end.