if you buy from a dealer you pay tax and a transfer fee. When you sell with a dealer you pay 10 to 20% of the sale price. It has to go up a lot before you make up for these costs.
If you buy from an auction house I think the numbers are similar.
If you buy privately and sell privately there are none of those charges except possibly Dave's neglible fee but it requires alot of leg work to find something nice.
A dealer has many for you to look at and provides a good service for selling in that respect but you have to pay for that.
I do all of the above and hope that should I have to liquidate I can break even. If so, my hobby expense is laying out money for toys and spending money shooting which is the expensive part whether clays or hunting. It ain't cheap to fly out to South Dakota.
