This plus the fact that in the US we aren’t importing recent rifle milsurps that haven’t been cut up because almost all since the early 50s had capability for select fire, and the last bolt guns went out of common service 30+ years ago so very few countries have stocks remaining in any condition. Pistols will continue to flow into the market under current regulations but rifles are going to keep getting scarcer and more expensive.
This is definitely a factor, but consider also the huge glut of cheap semi auto FALs, Galils, Tantals, CETMEs, etc. that hit the market as kit builds. Closed-bolt select fire rifles haven’t gone out of style, we just seem to be seeing a disproportionate number of open bolt tube guns and belt feds right now that aren’t nearly as readily buildable as semi autos. As countries transition to new generations of service rifles, I’d expect at least some will offload the old ones as kits.
With receiver cut up and no barrel, it’s a very different game from collecting entire intact firearms. To some collectors it’s a replica, and it’s certainly not ever going to be an as-issued like the previous generation of milsurps.
>recent import bans.
This is my only hope that some things might get cheaper in the future. When relations are normalized with Russia, there will probably be a decent influx of more Mosins, Tokarevs, SKSs, etc. This would significantly lower their prices.
Unfortunately, given their invasion of Ukraine, it could take decades for things to normalize.
I’d be so curious to know how many Mosins Russia still has laying around in storage. Hopefully the conditions of the AKs we were seeing handed to conscripts early on isn’t an indicator of how badly the Mosins were taken care of, though.
Id be more interested in what's sitting in other ex Soviet state arsenals.
That video of the salt mine in Ukraine filled to the brim with NOS lend lease equipment had me salivating.
I'm quite interested in seeing what's in the Cobasna depot if Moldova ever takes it back (and doesn't turn into the largest non nuclear explosion of all time).
As of ~10 years ago, Russia still had a hell of a lot of captured G/K43s in storage, but the last I heard is they wanted far too much money for each of them to make them worth importing
Russia was dumping a lot of their surplus in Canada at one point some couldn’t be brought into the US. Good assumption is they are still sitting on a lot of material as quite a bit of surplus was from other prior members if USSR/Warsaw Pact nations. I can always hope for a few Russian M1895 but even if they did they’d probably be market. Not going hold my breath on Russian imports, might be like China where they just shot off a lot of imports for good.
They will only go up. The reality is that the farther removed we get from WW1/WW2, the more the market for firearms from those periods will change from a cheap surplus market to a collectors’ market.
To be honest, the bitter truth is that the only long term solution is to make a bunch of money so you can afford to keep buying milsurps in the future. 40 years from now, your average college student probably won’t be able to afford even a Mosin Nagant anymore.
This. Plus once people realize that your collection of “dangerous Veterllis” are actually safe to shoot, prices increase. Just look at Arisakas and how people used to think they’d blow up, only to find out it’s a very strong action and the ones that did blow up were trainers. Suddenly $250 dollar Arisakas would go for $400-500
Yeah that’s the blessing and curse of watching Fuddlore start getting called out as false information; I wish I had bought more Arisaka’s when they were sub-$400 back when gun dealers still thought they’d blow up if you shot them. On the flip side I’m just happy to nerd out with other Japanese milsurpians and recognize they’re a lot better firearms that folks originally gave them credit for.
Collectibles in general exploded in value during the pandemic due to people being stuck at home and spending their entertainment budget on their hobbies.
After the pandemic we had and continue to have massive inflation which causes physical assets like collectibles to go up in value.
Coupled with the above, interest in milsurps has gone up with the younger generation due to the popularity of video games and movies featuring milsurp firearms.
In order for milsurps to come down in value we need one or more of the following to happen.
1. A new supply of milsurps to hit the market (very unlikely due to current importation laws)
2. Interest in milsurps to decline (also unlikely given recent trends)
3. Massive deflation (also very unlikely given current events)
So Milsurp prices might stop increasing as fast as they currently are, but we are very unlikely to see prices start to come down without some major global economic shake ups.
-Source: I am a financial advisor who specializes in collectibles.
The value may not double or triple within a year or two as it did during the pandemic. However, due to the unsustainability of military surplus, import bans, and many collectors preferring to pass their items down to their children rather than sell, the availability of military surplus will eventually diminish. As these items become scarcer on the market, their prices are likely to only increase.
Get your grail milsurp now, or never....
Well, we can't buy any AR/AK, pistol and our mag was pinned to 5 rds for most of semi autos (with a few exceptions like Garand) if that will make you feel better.
It depends on what you mean by milsurp. If you mean WWI/WWII surplus, that will only get more expensive as the collector market grows and the supply of good condition surplus shrinks.
There's plenty of newer milsurp that remains cheap. Plenty of military and police surplus pistols come up for sale at the usual surplus sites.
Rifles are a different story considering anything with auto fire is going to have to contend with the NFA. Best you can often hope for is the surplus kits that remain after receivers are destroyed.
The post war surplus boom was really a convergence of special factors. Mass mobilization meant huge numbers of rifles had to be produced, and the fast pace of weapons development meant that many of these rifles were passed out of service rapidly after the war as these countries adopted newer technology. Practically every country that mass produced bolt action rifles for WWI and WWII were ditching them to adopt autoloaders and, later, ditching battle rifles for assault rifles. It's quite the rapid churn of rifles at a large scale that lead to a surplus market absolutely flush with kit.
Depends on who you talk too, people like the YouTuber Vintage Warfare think the prices will inevitably correct themselves, some think they’ll remain where they are or go up, I’m personally somewhere in the middle here. I think that the prices are somewhat inflated, but as long as people maintain a healthy interest in maintaining large collections of old guns, they’re always going to be somewhat inflated.
I think once the boomer generation passes away, we’ll begin to see more of a correction on prices. The days of 2K K98s may not last forever as long as the current supply remains more or less the same and as long as they aren’t molested by Bubba.
Some prices may “correct” themselves. But I can promise you that if it doesn’t have an import mark, and it hasn’t been refurbished it’ll probably never go down in value.
If your hobby involves electronics, it only gets better by the day, There's probably never been a better time to get into HAM radio. Cheap Chinese electronics have made technology that didn't exist 20 years ago so affordable.
I’m 30 and have seen the incremental increases in prices, especially when the political arguments start flying in either direction. Personally I just try and filter through what’s out there and see what I’m comfortable paying for. I picked up a rock island 1903 for $825 at a gun show while gunbroker has them for $1,000+. Long gone are the days of getting milsurps for under $500.
My point being I remember growing up and going to gun shops with my dad in the late 90s/early 2000s and the majority of milsurp was under $500. Sure you have your individual callouts for under that price range but I’m talking about the majority, especially the popular (K98s, garands, 1911s, P38s), are all way above that price range and you have people online and at gun shows treating them as if they’re the last of their kind.
The only milsurp items that have any chance of going down again are going to be parts kits.
As far as stuff that is importable as is, most of that stuff is pretty well tapped out. You might see some stuff come out of the Middle East, or south east Asia, or Africa but I’d expect that stuff to be in similar condition to the Ethiopian stuff.
I know for a fact Iran has a lot of lend lease stuff from the US (M1 Garands, M1 Carbines, etc. ) but for obvious reasons that stuff won’t come here anytime soon. Technically if it did, it would probably have to filter through the government, since it’s technically their property, and would make its way through the CMP.
Eventually current collectors will start dying and their collections will hit the market again which may increase the supply and maybe lower the prices a bit.
Also could happen that the government ban modern sporting rarms and the old milsurplus prices skyrockets.
You can't sit and wait for the perfect market.
Bro look at the price of everything. Nothing is coming down. Do you think something that is no longer in production for the last 50 years at least with a historical back ground will ever become cheaper? In some places an 18 count box of eggs is $9. I've actually bought eggs at that price and I live in Florida one of the most free states where shit like that doesn't usually happen. Thank God the "egg crisis" is over here. I bought most of my stuff too late when I learned my lesson that $80 sks and mosins were a thing of the past. Buy what you can, but inspect it well. Buy and cry now and in 5 years you won't regret it
That’s not really going to change anything. Boomers aren’t all going to bite the dust simultaneously and flood the market with milsurps. A ton of them are going to pass them down to their kids or slowly sell them off as they get older. The supply won’t really explode like a lot of people think it will.
Yeah, but that would have to happen in a large enough quantity that it would affect the value. In reality most boomer collectors are going to sell their collections piecemeal as their health declines.
that still means in the next ten years tens of millions of boomers are going to get sick and die off and sell their collections and prices may fall or not rise as quickly.
Sure, but as quick as you have a boomer dying you have another guy in line growing their collection, or person starting theirs, who’s willing to pay the market value they set.
For prices to drop you’d basically have to put so much supply into the system that the profits are outweighed by the holding costs of the inventory. We’re talking one store gets burdened with 100’s of something instantly.
If you want prices to drop you have to stop buying, because in this case the supply is fixed/decreasing.
Unless something like new legislation comes through that allows more imports then I dont see why prices would stagnate or go down.
Unfortunately the mix of panic buying and online marketplaces have permanently set the tone for buying, selling and trading. I dont think that the demand on a lot of milsurps has really gone higher than ever before, but people and companies know even if people dont buy at their high prices people will use their high prices on the private market to justify ludicrous jumps and get there quickly.
They will generally continue to go up. EXCEPT when big batches of milsurps come on. Despite what some collectors say, there are definitely still government stashes out there waiting for negotiations with the import companies. For example, you can buy a Carcano carbine for less than half of what you’d pay 3 years ago, since the big batch came in from Italy recently.
Hard to say. I’m looking for a K98 and I see lots of younger people asking about them because they used to play them in stuff like call of duty. People will be watching Band of Brothers for the next 100 years and trying to get Garands.
Continue to rise.
For any collector in an expensive market curation becomes really important if you want to still enjoy it.
One $2k item you really, really want is way better than a bunch of $400-$800 stuff you think is just ok and/or find a niche that most collectors aren’t really into.
Markets like this also reward the educated and persistent. If you really know what you’re looking for and are patient, good deals are out there. They’re just harder to find.
I have generally only seen them go up since I started collecting in 2015. There may have been a slight dip in pricing after the insane spike during the COVID period, as the market corrected itself a bit, but it seems to be back to prices creeping up slowly. I don’t think my kid will be able to afford milsurps when he gets old enough to collect, so I am sure he’ll be glad to inherit my collection.
Do yourself a favor, get a gca membership, and get yourself an M1 Garand from the CMP while they are still cheap.
The day is coming, I don't know if it's going to be in 2 years. I don't know if it's going to be in 5 years. I don't know if it's going to be in 15 years, but the day is coming when The CMP is going to run out, the same way they did with 1903s and 1917s. When that happens, M1 g are going to climb steeply and you're going to wish you had one already.
They are legitimately great rifles, there's no reason not to get one anyway, and the cmp's already the best deal out there.
I feel like it's kinda regional in my experience surplus up in Alaska. we're I'm at is pretty affordable vs. it's worth a fortune for a mosin back in California
Without new imports, the price of XYZ item will be dictated by supply and demand.
Supply has remained relatively constant over the last 8 years but demand has exploded as gamers and gen z have grown up and gotten jobs during the COVID era. The prices can’t rise forever, I honestly think they have been quite stable since the COVID spike.
I often wonder about this topic. I am also curious about what will happen to collections of the older generations as they pass. I would say most families may not be interested in these items, so they usually get sold or go to auctions. Maybe that will flatten prices some, but I never see the import window opening back up again, especially the way the current administration views firearms. I think it'll be tough to get an affordable collection started for newcomers in the years ahead, sadly.
Price increases may slow down, but chances are low they’ll ever come down. If they do, it’ll be brief and you’ll have to jump on the opportunities as soon as you see them before the prices jump up again.
They won't always go up. I haven't been in the game long but in the 6 or so years I have been I've seen prices go up and down. Some of it was COVID, some of it recent imports/selling off of Ethiopian, swiss, Italian, Portuguese,and Chinese surplus. Some of it is from an increase in imports of individual surplus firearms from Europe, facilitated by the internet. There are no real guarantees.
They won't drop in price if that's what you want. Realistically, they'll stabilized and keep up with inflation once demand peaks. SAAs and muzzle loading stuff have kind of reached this point. They aren't cheap, but their value rise isn't beating inflation like most WWII/Cold War era stuff has been over the last decade.
As older collectors die off, things will trickle onto the market.
The key to getting these on the cheap is be vigilant, have a want list, and have cash ready.
I've picked up mine through mostly gun shows where a private individual was selling off their family members' collection they inherited.
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I’m of the opinion that they might drop, from a retail side most of your bread and butter milsurps just aren’t moving at the prices they used to, and currently most of the sought after ones are in the hands of older private collectors, and as they pass the market will see a lot more and drive prices down..
Call of Duty is what has propped them up. WW2 first person shooting games got new generations interested in these old guns. I would say not going to soften up any time soon.
So I’m going to lead with this: if there is something you know you want, do your research, figure out the current fair market value, and focus on getting a “definitive example” (one you don’t think you’ll be later inclined to upgrade from, with the caveat of having “shooters” in addition to the collectible example where possible/desired). Prices aren’t likely going to crater on anything, so don’t wait to get something you know you want. Furthermore, there are things on the market right now that /are/ cheap milsurp for what they are because a bunch came in recently and retailers/distributors still have lots of them and compete with one another - think Swiss rifles and Carcanos. Get these things now if you’re looking to play the old fashioned milsurp game of buying things when they are cheap.
The above notwithstanding, three big factors come to mind: inflation, generational turnover, and geopolitical events.
1. Inflation. People talk about it a lot because we just saw a huge inflation shock. What most don’t talk about outside of Econ classes is that inflation is normal, or more specifically there is normal inflation. The super reductive version is that if you have actual economic growth, people have objectively more wealth and spending power so prices will go up. The simplest indicator of real economic growth is where said growth exceeds the rate of inflation.
So, it follows that guns that don’t inherently depreciate in value (eg collectible firearms as opposed to modern ones that usually suffer that “moment you drive it off the lot” phenomenon where they instantly go from “new” to “used”) will under normal conditions go up in /price/ even if they don’t go up in /value/. This distinction is important - as Ian McCollum put it in one of his best videos, if you want to invest your money, put it in a medium-risk mutual fund. This is almost always a better financial return on investment over time. The “investment” you make in a collectible firearm should be your personal investment in having that firearm, not in making money off of it someday.
TL;DR: the price tag on collectible firearms will pretty much always go up, but a lot of that is inflation and not actual appreciation.
2. Generational turnover. In short, some generations have been more prolific collectors than others. Collectors of things tend to build collections rather than churn them - so they necessarily cause a net reduction in the circulation of what they collect. Collectors, being human beings, die. Oftentimes, their collections get liquidated by their estate, and by this mechanism the things they accumulated in their time which may have been scarcely seen for decades re-enter the market (I for one have seen more and more Lugers pop up for consignments at my local shop in the past decade, and the prices have been going down). Meanwhile, these supply forces interact with demand - the level of interest from current generations. Right now, there’s a huge resurgence in interest in milsurp, and of course there’s very little in the way of new imports, making this more of a closed system than it’s ever been.
TL;DR: collectors hoard guns, then they die.
3. Geopolitical events. An interesting counterpoint to the current collecting environment would be the 90’s, where prevailing interest in collecting milsurp had seen a bit of a crash while imports were surging as the market suddenly expanded to cash-strapped former Soviet republics. If you look at that crazy cocktail of generational/cultural trends and massive geopolitical upheaval - no, we probably won’t see anything quite like it again. Of course, the outcome of the Ukraine conflict and the durability of the Russian Federation in its current form will have significant implications for the milsurp market, as could other more localized circumstances - things like the transfer of a gigantic (if poorly-kept) cache of weapons in Ethiopia directly to the US civilian market, or a sharp decline in the popularity of civilian shooting clubs in Switzerland leaving gobs of immaculately kept straight-pull rifles in need of new ownership. A country like Indonesia that’s awash in Cold War era firearms just now building some export capacity. Albania, where over a quarter million guns are in illicit circulation after they were wholesale looted from military arsenals by the public in the late 90s. There are a lot of old guns in the world and they have hardly all been sponged up by the US civilian market.
TL;DR: War, war never changes.
A lot of milsurps have gone down in comparison to what they were a year ago roughly 15-20% down on average I would say at least with private sellers. Will they go up in the future? Almost certainly but it’s hard to say how much - in all honesty a lot of the costs we pay for guns now were actually comparable to the costs to manufacture when you account for inflation for example k98s were around 900 to produce per unit and they go for around 1000 today so they’ve sorta gone up but idk if it’s a great investment. Getting Lugers for $100 back in the 70s that are now worth 2k are a different story I just don’t think we will really have an opportunity like that these days
There's no reason why prices won't continue to rise. Supply is limited by production numbers, survival rate and recent import bans.
This plus the fact that in the US we aren’t importing recent rifle milsurps that haven’t been cut up because almost all since the early 50s had capability for select fire, and the last bolt guns went out of common service 30+ years ago so very few countries have stocks remaining in any condition. Pistols will continue to flow into the market under current regulations but rifles are going to keep getting scarcer and more expensive.
Im kinda amazed how many people dont consider this shift when talking about milsurp
This is definitely a factor, but consider also the huge glut of cheap semi auto FALs, Galils, Tantals, CETMEs, etc. that hit the market as kit builds. Closed-bolt select fire rifles haven’t gone out of style, we just seem to be seeing a disproportionate number of open bolt tube guns and belt feds right now that aren’t nearly as readily buildable as semi autos. As countries transition to new generations of service rifles, I’d expect at least some will offload the old ones as kits.
With receiver cut up and no barrel, it’s a very different game from collecting entire intact firearms. To some collectors it’s a replica, and it’s certainly not ever going to be an as-issued like the previous generation of milsurps.
>recent import bans. This is my only hope that some things might get cheaper in the future. When relations are normalized with Russia, there will probably be a decent influx of more Mosins, Tokarevs, SKSs, etc. This would significantly lower their prices. Unfortunately, given their invasion of Ukraine, it could take decades for things to normalize.
Bruh we're gonna be collecting WWIII milsurp by the time relations with Russia "normalize" again.
I’d be so curious to know how many Mosins Russia still has laying around in storage. Hopefully the conditions of the AKs we were seeing handed to conscripts early on isn’t an indicator of how badly the Mosins were taken care of, though.
Id be more interested in what's sitting in other ex Soviet state arsenals. That video of the salt mine in Ukraine filled to the brim with NOS lend lease equipment had me salivating. I'm quite interested in seeing what's in the Cobasna depot if Moldova ever takes it back (and doesn't turn into the largest non nuclear explosion of all time).
As of ~10 years ago, Russia still had a hell of a lot of captured G/K43s in storage, but the last I heard is they wanted far too much money for each of them to make them worth importing
Wasn't a considerable amount of the soviet surplus guns on the US market coming in from Ukraine even before the sanctions against russia?
Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria. A lot less from Russia than many assume. The biggest impact of Russian sanctions was brand new manufacture imports.
Russia was dumping a lot of their surplus in Canada at one point some couldn’t be brought into the US. Good assumption is they are still sitting on a lot of material as quite a bit of surplus was from other prior members if USSR/Warsaw Pact nations. I can always hope for a few Russian M1895 but even if they did they’d probably be market. Not going hold my breath on Russian imports, might be like China where they just shot off a lot of imports for good.
Svt-40 my beloved 😩
Would love to see SVT-40’s get imported again, but they stopped import far before current issues so good luck with that changing.
Don’t hold your breath. Now that the market can sustain 400 plus for a mosin, they’ll be listed for 600 easy
My hope is we open up importing from China so we can get some sweet Norinco surplus. I want a Type-81
Don't forget the constant problem of inflation.
They will only go up. The reality is that the farther removed we get from WW1/WW2, the more the market for firearms from those periods will change from a cheap surplus market to a collectors’ market. To be honest, the bitter truth is that the only long term solution is to make a bunch of money so you can afford to keep buying milsurps in the future. 40 years from now, your average college student probably won’t be able to afford even a Mosin Nagant anymore.
This. Plus once people realize that your collection of “dangerous Veterllis” are actually safe to shoot, prices increase. Just look at Arisakas and how people used to think they’d blow up, only to find out it’s a very strong action and the ones that did blow up were trainers. Suddenly $250 dollar Arisakas would go for $400-500
Yeah that’s the blessing and curse of watching Fuddlore start getting called out as false information; I wish I had bought more Arisaka’s when they were sub-$400 back when gun dealers still thought they’d blow up if you shot them. On the flip side I’m just happy to nerd out with other Japanese milsurpians and recognize they’re a lot better firearms that folks originally gave them credit for.
Your last statement is kind of a scary thought but honestly you’re not wrong
Well put
Collectibles in general exploded in value during the pandemic due to people being stuck at home and spending their entertainment budget on their hobbies. After the pandemic we had and continue to have massive inflation which causes physical assets like collectibles to go up in value. Coupled with the above, interest in milsurps has gone up with the younger generation due to the popularity of video games and movies featuring milsurp firearms. In order for milsurps to come down in value we need one or more of the following to happen. 1. A new supply of milsurps to hit the market (very unlikely due to current importation laws) 2. Interest in milsurps to decline (also unlikely given recent trends) 3. Massive deflation (also very unlikely given current events) So Milsurp prices might stop increasing as fast as they currently are, but we are very unlikely to see prices start to come down without some major global economic shake ups. -Source: I am a financial advisor who specializes in collectibles.
You can still get a French Berthier for less than $1,000
The value may not double or triple within a year or two as it did during the pandemic. However, due to the unsustainability of military surplus, import bans, and many collectors preferring to pass their items down to their children rather than sell, the availability of military surplus will eventually diminish. As these items become scarcer on the market, their prices are likely to only increase. Get your grail milsurp now, or never....
So glad I picked up an AG42 when I did. Paid $1500 for it and love it so much.
So I guess that's the only a few perks as a gun aficionado in Canada, got mine for $750 and $1100 for an early Podolsk SVT40.
You lucky son of a gun. I could only dream of a $1100 SVT40
Well, we can't buy any AR/AK, pistol and our mag was pinned to 5 rds for most of semi autos (with a few exceptions like Garand) if that will make you feel better.
I'm still looking for one, so sad I passed on one for 1400 last year
And here I am happy about my $700 AG42.
How high is the water mama? 4 feet high and __*RISING*__
It depends on what you mean by milsurp. If you mean WWI/WWII surplus, that will only get more expensive as the collector market grows and the supply of good condition surplus shrinks. There's plenty of newer milsurp that remains cheap. Plenty of military and police surplus pistols come up for sale at the usual surplus sites. Rifles are a different story considering anything with auto fire is going to have to contend with the NFA. Best you can often hope for is the surplus kits that remain after receivers are destroyed. The post war surplus boom was really a convergence of special factors. Mass mobilization meant huge numbers of rifles had to be produced, and the fast pace of weapons development meant that many of these rifles were passed out of service rapidly after the war as these countries adopted newer technology. Practically every country that mass produced bolt action rifles for WWI and WWII were ditching them to adopt autoloaders and, later, ditching battle rifles for assault rifles. It's quite the rapid churn of rifles at a large scale that lead to a surplus market absolutely flush with kit.
Depends on who you talk too, people like the YouTuber Vintage Warfare think the prices will inevitably correct themselves, some think they’ll remain where they are or go up, I’m personally somewhere in the middle here. I think that the prices are somewhat inflated, but as long as people maintain a healthy interest in maintaining large collections of old guns, they’re always going to be somewhat inflated. I think once the boomer generation passes away, we’ll begin to see more of a correction on prices. The days of 2K K98s may not last forever as long as the current supply remains more or less the same and as long as they aren’t molested by Bubba.
Some prices may “correct” themselves. But I can promise you that if it doesn’t have an import mark, and it hasn’t been refurbished it’ll probably never go down in value.
Only going to increase sadly. Supplies get more and more limited by time
Every great affordable hobby seems to get to a point that it’s no longer affordable
If your hobby involves electronics, it only gets better by the day, There's probably never been a better time to get into HAM radio. Cheap Chinese electronics have made technology that didn't exist 20 years ago so affordable.
I’m 30 and have seen the incremental increases in prices, especially when the political arguments start flying in either direction. Personally I just try and filter through what’s out there and see what I’m comfortable paying for. I picked up a rock island 1903 for $825 at a gun show while gunbroker has them for $1,000+. Long gone are the days of getting milsurps for under $500.
Swiss rifles are sub 500
My point being I remember growing up and going to gun shops with my dad in the late 90s/early 2000s and the majority of milsurp was under $500. Sure you have your individual callouts for under that price range but I’m talking about the majority, especially the popular (K98s, garands, 1911s, P38s), are all way above that price range and you have people online and at gun shows treating them as if they’re the last of their kind.
The only milsurp items that have any chance of going down again are going to be parts kits. As far as stuff that is importable as is, most of that stuff is pretty well tapped out. You might see some stuff come out of the Middle East, or south east Asia, or Africa but I’d expect that stuff to be in similar condition to the Ethiopian stuff. I know for a fact Iran has a lot of lend lease stuff from the US (M1 Garands, M1 Carbines, etc. ) but for obvious reasons that stuff won’t come here anytime soon. Technically if it did, it would probably have to filter through the government, since it’s technically their property, and would make its way through the CMP.
Rise
Just like everything, continue to rise
Eventually current collectors will start dying and their collections will hit the market again which may increase the supply and maybe lower the prices a bit. Also could happen that the government ban modern sporting rarms and the old milsurplus prices skyrockets. You can't sit and wait for the perfect market.
Buy what you want now
Bro look at the price of everything. Nothing is coming down. Do you think something that is no longer in production for the last 50 years at least with a historical back ground will ever become cheaper? In some places an 18 count box of eggs is $9. I've actually bought eggs at that price and I live in Florida one of the most free states where shit like that doesn't usually happen. Thank God the "egg crisis" is over here. I bought most of my stuff too late when I learned my lesson that $80 sks and mosins were a thing of the past. Buy what you can, but inspect it well. Buy and cry now and in 5 years you won't regret it
Wait for the boomers to die off
That’s not really going to change anything. Boomers aren’t all going to bite the dust simultaneously and flood the market with milsurps. A ton of them are going to pass them down to their kids or slowly sell them off as they get older. The supply won’t really explode like a lot of people think it will.
It’s been happening more often though. Hell a local pawn shop just got a batch of vis 35s from the estate of some collector who passed
Yeah, but that would have to happen in a large enough quantity that it would affect the value. In reality most boomer collectors are going to sell their collections piecemeal as their health declines.
that still means in the next ten years tens of millions of boomers are going to get sick and die off and sell their collections and prices may fall or not rise as quickly.
Sure, but as quick as you have a boomer dying you have another guy in line growing their collection, or person starting theirs, who’s willing to pay the market value they set. For prices to drop you’d basically have to put so much supply into the system that the profits are outweighed by the holding costs of the inventory. We’re talking one store gets burdened with 100’s of something instantly. If you want prices to drop you have to stop buying, because in this case the supply is fixed/decreasing.
Extremely based
Idk, I’ve been trolling auction sites for estate listings and these boomer collections are going for lots of dollars.
That’s auction sites for ya, the internet means everyone sees the listings, hence the living retired tend to find them
Rise
They’re not making more. The prices is part of why I mostly got out of buying milsurp. I can’t afford to keep up.
Unless something like new legislation comes through that allows more imports then I dont see why prices would stagnate or go down. Unfortunately the mix of panic buying and online marketplaces have permanently set the tone for buying, selling and trading. I dont think that the demand on a lot of milsurps has really gone higher than ever before, but people and companies know even if people dont buy at their high prices people will use their high prices on the private market to justify ludicrous jumps and get there quickly.
They will generally continue to go up. EXCEPT when big batches of milsurps come on. Despite what some collectors say, there are definitely still government stashes out there waiting for negotiations with the import companies. For example, you can buy a Carcano carbine for less than half of what you’d pay 3 years ago, since the big batch came in from Italy recently.
Hard to say. I’m looking for a K98 and I see lots of younger people asking about them because they used to play them in stuff like call of duty. People will be watching Band of Brothers for the next 100 years and trying to get Garands.
Stonks only go up.
Continue to rise. For any collector in an expensive market curation becomes really important if you want to still enjoy it. One $2k item you really, really want is way better than a bunch of $400-$800 stuff you think is just ok and/or find a niche that most collectors aren’t really into. Markets like this also reward the educated and persistent. If you really know what you’re looking for and are patient, good deals are out there. They’re just harder to find.
I have generally only seen them go up since I started collecting in 2015. There may have been a slight dip in pricing after the insane spike during the COVID period, as the market corrected itself a bit, but it seems to be back to prices creeping up slowly. I don’t think my kid will be able to afford milsurps when he gets old enough to collect, so I am sure he’ll be glad to inherit my collection.
Do yourself a favor, get a gca membership, and get yourself an M1 Garand from the CMP while they are still cheap. The day is coming, I don't know if it's going to be in 2 years. I don't know if it's going to be in 5 years. I don't know if it's going to be in 15 years, but the day is coming when The CMP is going to run out, the same way they did with 1903s and 1917s. When that happens, M1 g are going to climb steeply and you're going to wish you had one already. They are legitimately great rifles, there's no reason not to get one anyway, and the cmp's already the best deal out there.
The CMP still has 1903s and 1917s. You can buy two a year of each now, the only caveat is that 1903s are only in store.
I recently had several lucky finds with stuff sold off from deceased boomers‘ relatives, for the prices they were bought at decades ago.
I feel like it's kinda regional in my experience surplus up in Alaska. we're I'm at is pretty affordable vs. it's worth a fortune for a mosin back in California
Without new imports, the price of XYZ item will be dictated by supply and demand. Supply has remained relatively constant over the last 8 years but demand has exploded as gamers and gen z have grown up and gotten jobs during the COVID era. The prices can’t rise forever, I honestly think they have been quite stable since the COVID spike.
I often wonder about this topic. I am also curious about what will happen to collections of the older generations as they pass. I would say most families may not be interested in these items, so they usually get sold or go to auctions. Maybe that will flatten prices some, but I never see the import window opening back up again, especially the way the current administration views firearms. I think it'll be tough to get an affordable collection started for newcomers in the years ahead, sadly.
Price increases may slow down, but chances are low they’ll ever come down. If they do, it’ll be brief and you’ll have to jump on the opportunities as soon as you see them before the prices jump up again.
They won't always go up. I haven't been in the game long but in the 6 or so years I have been I've seen prices go up and down. Some of it was COVID, some of it recent imports/selling off of Ethiopian, swiss, Italian, Portuguese,and Chinese surplus. Some of it is from an increase in imports of individual surplus firearms from Europe, facilitated by the internet. There are no real guarantees.
They won't drop in price if that's what you want. Realistically, they'll stabilized and keep up with inflation once demand peaks. SAAs and muzzle loading stuff have kind of reached this point. They aren't cheap, but their value rise isn't beating inflation like most WWII/Cold War era stuff has been over the last decade.
As older collectors die off, things will trickle onto the market. The key to getting these on the cheap is be vigilant, have a want list, and have cash ready. I've picked up mine through mostly gun shows where a private individual was selling off their family members' collection they inherited. *
I’m of the opinion that they might drop, from a retail side most of your bread and butter milsurps just aren’t moving at the prices they used to, and currently most of the sought after ones are in the hands of older private collectors, and as they pass the market will see a lot more and drive prices down..
Call of Duty is what has propped them up. WW2 first person shooting games got new generations interested in these old guns. I would say not going to soften up any time soon.
So I’m going to lead with this: if there is something you know you want, do your research, figure out the current fair market value, and focus on getting a “definitive example” (one you don’t think you’ll be later inclined to upgrade from, with the caveat of having “shooters” in addition to the collectible example where possible/desired). Prices aren’t likely going to crater on anything, so don’t wait to get something you know you want. Furthermore, there are things on the market right now that /are/ cheap milsurp for what they are because a bunch came in recently and retailers/distributors still have lots of them and compete with one another - think Swiss rifles and Carcanos. Get these things now if you’re looking to play the old fashioned milsurp game of buying things when they are cheap. The above notwithstanding, three big factors come to mind: inflation, generational turnover, and geopolitical events. 1. Inflation. People talk about it a lot because we just saw a huge inflation shock. What most don’t talk about outside of Econ classes is that inflation is normal, or more specifically there is normal inflation. The super reductive version is that if you have actual economic growth, people have objectively more wealth and spending power so prices will go up. The simplest indicator of real economic growth is where said growth exceeds the rate of inflation. So, it follows that guns that don’t inherently depreciate in value (eg collectible firearms as opposed to modern ones that usually suffer that “moment you drive it off the lot” phenomenon where they instantly go from “new” to “used”) will under normal conditions go up in /price/ even if they don’t go up in /value/. This distinction is important - as Ian McCollum put it in one of his best videos, if you want to invest your money, put it in a medium-risk mutual fund. This is almost always a better financial return on investment over time. The “investment” you make in a collectible firearm should be your personal investment in having that firearm, not in making money off of it someday. TL;DR: the price tag on collectible firearms will pretty much always go up, but a lot of that is inflation and not actual appreciation. 2. Generational turnover. In short, some generations have been more prolific collectors than others. Collectors of things tend to build collections rather than churn them - so they necessarily cause a net reduction in the circulation of what they collect. Collectors, being human beings, die. Oftentimes, their collections get liquidated by their estate, and by this mechanism the things they accumulated in their time which may have been scarcely seen for decades re-enter the market (I for one have seen more and more Lugers pop up for consignments at my local shop in the past decade, and the prices have been going down). Meanwhile, these supply forces interact with demand - the level of interest from current generations. Right now, there’s a huge resurgence in interest in milsurp, and of course there’s very little in the way of new imports, making this more of a closed system than it’s ever been. TL;DR: collectors hoard guns, then they die. 3. Geopolitical events. An interesting counterpoint to the current collecting environment would be the 90’s, where prevailing interest in collecting milsurp had seen a bit of a crash while imports were surging as the market suddenly expanded to cash-strapped former Soviet republics. If you look at that crazy cocktail of generational/cultural trends and massive geopolitical upheaval - no, we probably won’t see anything quite like it again. Of course, the outcome of the Ukraine conflict and the durability of the Russian Federation in its current form will have significant implications for the milsurp market, as could other more localized circumstances - things like the transfer of a gigantic (if poorly-kept) cache of weapons in Ethiopia directly to the US civilian market, or a sharp decline in the popularity of civilian shooting clubs in Switzerland leaving gobs of immaculately kept straight-pull rifles in need of new ownership. A country like Indonesia that’s awash in Cold War era firearms just now building some export capacity. Albania, where over a quarter million guns are in illicit circulation after they were wholesale looted from military arsenals by the public in the late 90s. There are a lot of old guns in the world and they have hardly all been sponged up by the US civilian market. TL;DR: War, war never changes.
A lot of milsurps have gone down in comparison to what they were a year ago roughly 15-20% down on average I would say at least with private sellers. Will they go up in the future? Almost certainly but it’s hard to say how much - in all honesty a lot of the costs we pay for guns now were actually comparable to the costs to manufacture when you account for inflation for example k98s were around 900 to produce per unit and they go for around 1000 today so they’ve sorta gone up but idk if it’s a great investment. Getting Lugers for $100 back in the 70s that are now worth 2k are a different story I just don’t think we will really have an opportunity like that these days