Machine Gun Price Guides

Price Guides last updated through July 2008

Where do the prices come from?

Price data comes from many different sources and is a combination of both asking and selling price. Asking price sources include Internet boards, over 30 dealer web sites and table displays from gun shows throughout the country. Selling price sources are actual sales from web auction sites, nationwide live auctions and sales numbers from machine gun dealers. Dealers and individuals are encouraged to provide sales information with the stipulation of confidentiality. Many dealers know it's easier to sell high ticket items to informed buyers.

The debate over asking/selling price is legendary and goes on and on . The usefulness of these charts is they show an average within a range of values and the historical trends in value. As the number of samples increases, the average becomes more useful, so popular models like MACS, Uzis, M16s are well represented in value while a M240B may not be. Next is the condition/price debate and that also is built into the range of values around the average. But to be more than a little blunt, condition variations on a $500 hunk of steel selling for $10,000 are not as significant as a $250 Kel-Tec P3AT handgun. Obviously many C&R pieces may be priced differently because historic originality and condition are important, but even that still only represents the last 15% of price. For some self-proclaimed experts this debate rages ad nauseum and these results will never satisfy their myopic pea-brains.

Finally, there are some sellers that excessively overprice and their items appear month-to-month until either the super-heated market catches up to them or they lower their price. But, increasingly dealers are fairly firm on price giving only token discounts to make a deal. Because there are only about 600-700 automatic weapons available for sale in the US at any given time, dealing is frequently being pushed to the background. Can there be a big difference in asking/selling price when an item’s asking price is increased month-to-month when it doesn’t sell? This surely is a strange market.

More than one dealer will buy any transferable NFA item at 90% or higher of its value and make money on market increases even after carrying the financial load. Do they irritate some of the other dealers? Probably, but... Still, the bottom line is if you feel that everything is 15-20% overvalued, then you can apply that information to what the charts provide.

A great example of price logic appeared on an Internet board this century. When asked what was the best price to ask for a 9mm MAC11, someone replied, “$2,500 will get it sold now, $3,000 will get it sold sometime and $3,500 will let everyone know you own it.” YMMV

Price Guides last updated through July2008


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