Cashing in on the Knowledge of Others

[Muncher 1953]

. If an average non gun guy inherits a rifle from a passed relative and has no idea what they have, is it wrong to help them not get burned as they have come to this forum for knowledgeable advice? I missed the K98a incident, how did that go down? I would like to know the scenario as I also frequently help people trying to find out what they have.

I agree w/Mantis’ point, but ‘new’ is relative, (always surprised to see a ‘member since 2013’ w/under 100 posts) and I’ve learned a metric TON from folks here. It would be a shame if the avarice of the few spoiled the open exchange of knowledge within the collecting community HERE. This is where the ‘good stuff’ is, if @Dave Roberts hadn’t told me about the forum (moments after buying my 1st K98k) I’d never have started collecting more. For our collectibles to be of value, we need new people to sell/pass them on to, part of that is sharing knowledge.

 

[mrfarb]

It’s easy, don’t give value advice ever. Educate, and if you see serial flippers then out them publicly.

 

[lthilsdorf]

This has happened to me a number of times on my Arisaka website. I get an email about what a rifle is and what makes it special, I give the information, and then I see it listed with almost word for word descriptions of what I said. One time I called the person out who did it on Gunboards but they never said anything back.

If someone posts and makes it clear "I inherited/bought/traded for this, I don't know what it is, and I plan to sell it because it doesn't fit in my collection", I'd be a-ok giving them the info assuming they offer it on this website first, to the same people that helped them.

 

[Cyrano4747]

I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand I frequently shy away from giving price info both for the reasons stated in here, and also because there's just so much more to it than the rough collector value. How fast do you need the money and how much effort can the person put in, for example. I"ve had this conversation with my wife before and if I get hit by a bus I'll be happy if she gets 70% of value from a few people I've given her contact info for. At the end of the day she just doesn't have the skillset to squeeze every last dime of value out with auctions and trader listings, nor would she really have the inclination to spend the years it would take to trickle things out. If I was disposing of my collection that's one thing, another thing for her.

On the other hand I've seen too many people get roundly screwed by unscrupulous dealers who make up some crap about the attic find grandpa rifle they have being "low condition" because of dust bunnies in the barrel and then give them pennies on the dollar for a $2000+ gun. One particularly egregious example I know of involved a friend of my wife's taking grandpa's bring back Luger - complete with holster and extra mags - to a gun show and getting $250 for it.

In 2018, not the 90s.

It does suck when people use this place as a free appraisal service but man I hate seeing people get screwed. Mostly I dislike people that flip for profit doing it. I've got no problem helping someone price grandpa's gun that they don't want, but if you're doing it as a business it's on you to learn the ropes.

 

[Cyrano4747]

The crappy thing is that value info is hard to come by. You can kind of manage it with searching recently completed auctions on GB, but that's a rough barometer at best.

I'm a bit in that boat myself at the moment. I need to re-value my collection to update my insurance and god, I bought some of these guns 15 and 20 years ago for way less than they're worth now. What's a russian refurbed SVT-40 worth? How about a bolt carrier m/m G/K43? Or a bolt m/m DOT 43 for that matter? In my head the latter is still a $700 gun, but I know it's worth more than that.

And this is from someone who, while far from an expert, is still more knowledgeable than the average person about military rifles and their values in general.

Heck, I've got some stuff in the parts drawer that I have zero idea how to price out. Unnumbered Steyr K98k armorer's bolt? I posted one a while back and had a ton of PMs offering to buy it, half of them from people I'd never heard of, one of those never-seen posters offering $100 which I'm fairly certain it's worth more than.

That's the other thing: there are a ton of lurkers here who will absolutely send out PMs to people saying they'll take that rifle they posted off their hands for $500, pity the bolt doesn't match but it's not worth any more than that don't you know, really I'm doing you a favor. And then turn around and flip it next week.

The more that I think about it it would be very worth while having a stickied thread with basic pricing info. Here's what an all matching gun in perfect condition is worth. Here's what a bolt m/m is worth. Here's what a bolt m/m with a heavily sanded stock is worth. Here's what a sporterized gun with missing bands but matching action/bolt/magazine is worth. Etc. Rough, round figures to have a resource that people can look at to understand if they're holding a $500 rifle, a $1500 rifle, or a $3000 rifle.

Basically, as much as I don't want to be a free appraisal service for small time flippers the harsh reality is that scammers thrive in low-information enviornments. Think of what resources like this forum did for making even new collectors aware of what the most obvious fake BS looks like, or even that renumbering parts is a thing they should be aware of in general. The people who really benefit from keeping at least rough, basic values secret are the ones who want to prey on the ill-informed.

 

[Fal Grunt]

I'm pretty open with people about pricing. Probably why I'm not more successful. I remember being at a gunshow a few years ago and a guy was trying to sell a rifle and the dealer at the table wouldn't even give him an offer for it, because that was the same as appraising it. He offered appraising services for some outrageous price.

I'm of the opinion that you let the flippers flip. It is more valuable to be the source of information that people come to. As many or more people are going to be happy to know a little bit about the rifle and a fair price for it. It irks me, and I have had it happen to me, it's life.

I'm emailing a guy right now that offered me a Mauser several years ago for $8k. I politely told him he was smoking crack. He said that was the appraised value he paid several hundred dollars to find out. Well several years have gone by and low and behold no one is interested.

Pricing for this website is SOOOOO esoteric there is no way you could put up even relevant blanket pricing. 99% of the public do not value things the way the collectors here do. If I put a nice honest worn K98k up on gunbroker it would bring $800. If I put a pimp shined POS up it would bring $1200.

People profit, benefit, grow, by knowledge shared. There will always be a few shitbags that take advantage that. On a whole we are better off continuing to publicly share our knowledge.

 

[Cyrano4747]

Pricing for this website is SOOOOO esoteric there is no way you could put up even relevant blanket pricing. 99% of the public do not value things the way the collectors here do. If I put a nice honest worn K98k up on gunbroker it would bring $800. If I put a pimp shined POS up it would bring $1200.

Eh, I'll disagree with this a bit. If anything GB tends to go consistently high. I've seen a lot of fairly worn 98ks go for way more than I'd pay for them in the last few months, even with the softer market right now.

Now, I'm assuming competently structured auctions. If someone posts three blurry cell phone pics with no visible SN and the auction is called "Gewohr 98 carb" then yeah, that's going low. But you can put some pretty trash rifles out there and get more than $800 as long as you have good pics and hit the correct keywords to draw traffic.

If we're going to complain about GB I mostly come at it from the other direction, with people who have an honest m/m seeing a high condition all matching gun that's posted at fishing expedition prices (say $5000+) thinking their gun is worth that since they don't understand the difference between them.

agreed that most of the public doesn't value things the way we do, but I also don't think most of that public is hunting auction sites.

 

[chrisftk]

People profit, benefit, grow, by knowledge shared. There will always be a few shitbags that take advantage that. On a whole we are better off continuing to publicly share our knowledge.

Agreed. I'm still of the mind that people that are caught with their hand in the cookie jar will get no quarter here. My heartburn comes with people lifting stuff from the pages here to boost their listings or folks blatantly flipping stuff vetted here. I know there is no way to completely stop it, but it will be called out when it surfaces.

One other rant I will give is when people "call" something and ask me or others not to bid against them. Then once they win, it's on the chopping block on GB for a profit within a couple months (maybe after they get the dopamine hit from posting or handling it) and not offering to anyone that they asked to back down for them. If you do that once to me, you lose the courtesy of me backing off in the future.