doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Gun Sale Gone Wrong

I think that the title of this thread is a misnomer....It is not a gun deal gone bad, it is two people that could not come to common ground in the negotiations. Happens in business all the time.

In the words of Bill Murphy, gun stores don't want to own guns; they want to sell them. If they paid retail, they would really own it for a while. The thing that would really get my goat is the half-hour of leg swinging in the back room.

jack

Well here in PA buy for $200 sell for $400 is 100% return but not profit.

If you pay anything, even one cent and resell it, 100% profit is impossible.

Sorry if this is spliting hairs but it is a fact.

The local Scheels around here is known for their complete ignorance of anything remotely collectible in the way of firearms.They had a Pre-64 Model 70 in 300 Winchester come in the store and offered the guy 300 dollars for it. Rare caliber,original and 98% finish.Said it was a hard caliber to sell.They had no idea of its collectors value.
One of their salesman bought the gun himself and resold it for 3 times his cost the same day to collector.I could go on and on about this particular store as one of my relatives worked there.

There is ignorance and/or complete ignorance at many big box gun stores and there is a real difference. Ignorance is very common when the store employee either does not know what he is doing or is misinformed about what he thinks the facts are or is just flat out mistaken. Might just be a simple lack of knowledge, and to be fair who know about all the rifles, pistols and shotguns out there and what their fair market value might be.

Complete ignorance is another matter. Then the person is pretending to know what they are doing, often with a desire to sound like they know what they are doing when they really do not. BS artist is another way to look at them.

Most big box gun room employees have very limited real knowledge. If you have more than one real smart fellow in the gun room it is a very well staffed room . Most have about a half smart person and a smart buyer suffers. It is hard to work with any expert when you know more than the expert does. You have to teach them what they do not know to get them to do what you hope they can or will do for you. Most of us just give up and go elsewhere.

There have been a lot of truths spoken here, and I always do enjoy going on and reading even when it's the same thing being re-hashed for the thousandth time.

Some items of note from this thread:

1) You are selling a shotgun that is your old friend to a business where it's only merchandise. And because it's your friend you put a higher value on it then you should. And they have to guess whether they will have their money tied up in it for two weeks or four years, and the risk that to make it go away at some point in time they might have to sell it at loss. Just because it might be a nice gun doesn't mean that anyone will come into the store and buy it at even a low fair price.

2) Give someone who is trying to make a living at selling guns a break. Guns don't move off the shelves like bread and milk do and look how much of that inventory is tossed outr as garbage everyday because it doesn't sell and is now stale/spoiled.

3) There is no such thing as 100% profit. Percent profit by its very definition is "always" calculated based on the selling price. Pay $50 sell for $100 you made 50% profit. Pay $20 sell for $100 you made 80% profit. Pay $2 sell for $100 you made 98% profit. Now if you pay $50 and put the price at $100 you have "marked the price up" 100%, but when you sell it at $100 you made 50% profit. Don't believe me, go to any definition site on the internet and verify the definition of percent profit. It's the same all over U.S. no matter where you are and all over the world as well. It's better defined than caliber and gauge as there is no range of acceptable variances.

4) Unless you have some killer gun and take it to a specialist who has eager customers for it, taking an average gun to a dealer is the worst choice. Do you expect to get the best price for your used car by taking it to the new car dealer in town and selling it to him even though you are not buying a new one from him. Same principal. Want to see how "easy" it might be to sell your gun at your desired price? List it on gunbroker or gunsinternational as previously suggested and see how many people beat you door down to buy it quick. Or if you think your local gun store has an eay go of selling guns, list it in your local paper or pennysaver and sit by the phone waiting for it to start ringing off the hook.

5) Here's an even better one, not from this thread but from a friend of mine who is an antique dealer. About two months ago a collector phoned him to offer him an antique that he had decided he didn't want any longer. When my friend told him that that was not his antique area of focus the collector told him that as a professional dealer in antiques it was his responsibility to focus on and handle all antiques and since he had a business in selling antiques it was also his responsibilty to buy everything offered to him and at a fair price to the collector. Amazing isn't it when we have something to sell. And when we see something we want we want the seller to sell it to us for less than he paid for it.

O.K., I've vented, now come blasting back at me with all those barrels blazing and spitting fire.

Technical violation of the law. A private individual who buys a gun with the intention of selling for a profit is considered to be dealing in firearms.

"There is no such thing as 100% profit. Percent profit by its very definition is "always" calculated based on the selling price. Pay $50 sell for $100 you made 50% profit. Pay $20 sell for $100 you made 80% profit. Pay $2 sell for $100 you made 98% profit. Now if you pay $50 and put the price at $100 you have "marked the price up" 100%, but when you sell it at $100 you made 50% profit. Don't believe me, go to any definition site on the internet and verify the definition of percent profit. It's the same all over U.S. no matter where you are and all over the world as well. It's better defined than caliber and gauge as there is no range of acceptable variances."

I agree that we are really splitting hairs. We all know that whether you want to call it return, margin, profit or whatever ...no one talks in terms of a percentage that can't exceed 100%. Can you imagine a couple gun dealers sitting around, bragging that "I made 89.345% profit on that deal!"? Of course not. They are much more likely to say "I tripled my money on that deal" or just "I made $400 on that deal." That's because the 'profit' method does not lend itself to the mental mathematics that people use in normal conversation.

If you're going to use profit as a percentage of selling price versus purchase price, you'd better be prepared to include in the same breath a statement of profits before and after taxes as well as the opportunity costs and the unburdened labor rate of the transaction. It'd be a shame to confuse the listener.

Hi all, well I started this post and I think its time to end it. I hope you all don't think I'm mad or POed at Scheels, it may come across that way, but I really am not. To be fair the guy I delt with was very nice and polite. I also did not expect to get the price I was asking, if I did great, but I also did not expect the offer they made to be so low. I wanted some room to deal, they did not and so I said no.

Could I try to sell it on the web, sure, but I thought I'd give someone the business here, plus its a lot less hassel. Will I sell it, I'll try, but to a private party, thru a local web site.

I will buy from them, but as I said odds and end, I have bought 1 gun from them (a Beretta 627EL, SxS - the european market gun, english stock and DT) it was a fair deal for both of us, I was happy with it. I don't see many deals however at this store, most are over priced, some way over. At one time this store did deal, no more - so be it.

I'm at fault for the title of this post - bad choice of words, I should have said "An Interesting Gun Deal".

As to profit, return, etc, ok sorry - again, bad choice of words on my part, but hey, this part is getting silly - don't you think.

My intent of this post was not to get folks to feel sorry for me or to down Scheels, perhaps it came across this way - if I did I'm sorry - I just wanted to tell what happened to me.

So lets end this on a happy note and all of us hug one another, again sorry for any misunderstanding. Next time I will choose my words more carefully.

All the best!

Greg

Greg
I don't think that anyone thought that it was malicious in anyway, just a lively conversation.
As far as the rest of it goes, it is just imparting knowledge about other things, that couldn't be bad could it?