Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Single Shots Surprise find at cabelas

Must depend on the store? I've always tried to dicker on their price but all I ever get is a shrug and "it's out of my control". Of course I don't get too demanding when I'm holding a gun I know is already priced at a fraction of it's value.

I was watching some prices on Guns International for rifles offered by various Cabela's Gun Libraries around the country. It's been a few years so I forget the exact time period (a month, maybe?) but if a firearm didn't sell within that time frame they'd lower the price by 9 or 10%. Then if it still didn't sell they'd lower it by another 9-10% and so on.

Watched an 1885 Traditional Hunter for a while, called the store where it was located and asked that it be sent to the local Cabela's, so it cost me $25 basically for the right to look at it. When it got there I said I'd been watching it, it hadn't sold for X amount of time, so offered them 10% less than the last listed price at the other store. The guy looked at something on his computer - most likely its price history and length of time for sale - and said okay, no problem.

'Course, that was 3-4 years ago, Bass Pro probably f'ed up that paradigm. Went into the local gun library last week and it was pathetic, they had maybe 1/10 the amount of firearms they used to display and most of those were black shotguns or rifles with a few scraggly semi-auto pistols. Shame, that, I'd bought three or four guns from them at very reasonable prices over the last several years.

Gun prices at Cabelas have little correlation with what others are buying or selling, especially on-line sales, in my opinion.

Last month I picked up a Ruger No 1 stainless in 45-70 from Cabelas. They shipped it to my local BassPro. Saved me a few $$!!.
Price was fair. When was the last time you saw one for sale? I used it to take a deer on the last day of our rifle season.

If the gun has been sitting for awhile they will usually deal. I’ve had the manager of the gun library refuse to deal on anything that was put out within a few weeks.

They will markdown stuff that’s been sitting. They can look up how much they paid for an item and won’t go below that unless they screwed up when they assessed the value and overpaid.

I haven't seen any truly good deals since BPS took over but I seldom venture in there any more. Pre-BPS I was well enough known at the local Cabelas that if I bought a gun it was underpriced! A couple of examples were a Remington Model 81 modified by Krieger to a detachable magazine; a 25 caliber Model 8 for $300; a pair of Savage 1899s, one in 25/35 and the other in 38/55 for $1200 total; a Browning Citori 3.5" Hunter for $650; and an original Marlin 410 lever shotgun for $400 are a few that come to mind.

In the old days Cabala's would negotiate on prices if the gun hand been on the shelf for a while. It seemed they needed about 6 months to begin thinking about dealing. I actually bought back a gun I sold them for less than they paid for it but the gun sat for nearly two years.

I’ve picked up a couple of deals there, but not since BP took it over. I’ve stopped in a few times when the mood took me but there’s been no deals that I could see. Since they revamped the gun library search engine, it’s no longer very usable so I don’t even look there anymore.