Memorial Day Weekend Gun Show

Our Town had a gun show this weekend so we went to visit and check it out.

Frankly I was unimpressed.  There were plenty of ARs, standard capacity magazines, and military surplus gear (web belts and the like) for moderately inflated prices.  For example, stripped AR lowers for $120 and up (plus sales tax).   There were a handful of surplus GI AR mags for $6/each but I passed -- one of the weak points of the AR platform can be the mags and it just isn't worth it for me to save $3 per mag and get questionable quality.  They had Thermold 20 round AR mags 3/$25...  Not a bargain when I consider I got them 6/$25 at Sportsman's Warehouse (and they're kind of marginal in quality).  There were infinite quantities of cheap shoddy nylon floppy holsters for $20 each.  A lot of "deals" like that.

The used gun selection was not great either.  A lot of very to moderately inflated prices.  For example, there were some Enfields in 303 with tags that read above $350 on them.  That's a fair price for an Enfield in good condition but some of these were beat to heck in fair condition at best, or sporterized (some might unfairly say "bubba-ized").

There were some precious metals dealers there.  With silver at just under $30/oz I thought there might be some buying opportunities but I saw a lot of silver rounds starting at $40 on up...  Which is excessive for standard old American Eagles without any numismatic value.

I did find two decent deals.  First was ammo.  There's a regional company that makes decent ammo I've used before for a fair price.  They had cans of 500 pistol rounds for about $165 (including an ammo can).  As a quick check Ammoman is selling a similar quantity of US new manufacture for $199 without the can.  I'm doing pretty good on ammo right now though so I passed.

The second was ammo cans.  I found nice, quality, cleaned up and pressure washed 50 cal cans with nice designs stenciled on the sides for $12 each.  A few of those made their way home with me; you can never have enough ammo cans.

Overall kind of a disappointing gun show.  We were hoping to find a decent deal on some side by sides, but alas, it was not to be.