Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Selling Custom/Semi Custom Guns

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Well said

Very well said John.

First I would determine who, if anyone in the family, would like any of your guns. I would gift them to family members before you pass. Then I would sell off the rest. Either here on the fire or online. Gun Broker etc. A friend of mine passed a couple of years ago. He had a dozen guns and a pretty good knife collection. His wife didn't have a clue what to do. I sold several of the guns and most of the knives here on the Fire classifieds. The rest I sold at a few gun shows for her. She was very happy with what she received.

I would not leave instructions for someone to follow after your death. Jmo. There is enough to do when someone dies. No need to add to the list and put it on the family.

When I was younger I hunted a lot with my Grandfather. He loved to hunt for Deer, rabbits and squirrels. Nobody else in the family would go hunting with him. When I couldn't go he would hunt by himself. As he aged it became more difficult for him to go by himself. He had two sons, my uncles, but they would not go with him. They would just tell him he was to old. He only had a couple of shotguns and a rifle. They were not high dollar items. But on several occasions he told me he wanted me to have them. To me the value was sentimental. Lots of great memories of a grandfather passing hunting knowledge on to a grandson.

When he passed I could not get there until the next day. I asked about the guns. I was told "Don't worry about the guns, there gone."

Point being, $hit happens. Once your gone you have no control over what may happen to your stuff.

Take care of it now while you can. While you have plenty of time to make decisions and get the best return on your investment. Jmo.

I had a stroke almost 3 years ago when Covid was doing its thing gun sales were at a fast pace....made a decision to down size and made a large sell off and made very good profit if you can time the market you can profit very well....

P.S. I'am left handed !

It's going to happen to us all and we don't know exactly when ! When it does happen who ever are belonging are left to will enjoy them or sell them and there not a thing we can do !

So enjoy while you can !

Okie gives some good advice.

Start thinning this stuff out now, and make things much easier for your wife and everyone involved.

Okie makes too much sense. However, lets hope the ATF doesn't take our rights away by not allowing us to sell our guns. Those idiots need to be defunded!!!

I have dealt with some of this, before and after an individual's passing. These guys make some really good points. If there is anything you want to go to any particular person, give or sell it to them BEFORE you go. That's the only way to be sure they actually receive it. Because of the need for expediency for disposal, you can expect your estate/heirs to realize just pennies on the dollar for your stuff. It is also really hard to establish a value for custom guns because there are no comparables. And the market may be really small for any wildcats you may have because you cannot buy ammo for them. Only handloaders will be interested, and we are a relatively small subset of shooters.

A pawn shop near me has a 6mm-284 for sale, for example. It has an unmarked commercial Mauser action (no receiver rail cutout or stripper clip guides). What are the chamber dimensions? Where could I find dies for it and how much will they cost? Is the throat burned out on it? Chances are the original owner shot it a LOT, as the walnut thumbhole stock shows considerable "honest wear". It's not a chambering that got a box of ammo shot through it every five years. For these reasons, it may be worth only the price of a donor action. They are asking $600 for it, which probably means they have maybe $200 in it. For a rifle whose builder may have invested $1200 to build.

Sell them now and leave the funds in an account for her.

If you sell yourself on Gunbroker or a similar site, don't be surprised when a 1099-K shows up in the mail at the end of the tax year.

PM Sent.

Thanks

I have been through a similar situation recently. I had quite a few rifles that were worth more than the average hunting rifle and realized that there weren't as many years left as I would like. I had written good descriptions, low and high value, and a sales ad written for each item, instructions on where to sell them and how to ship them, etc. But then I realized that was unfair to expect her to deal with selling them and having to deal with the associated hassles.

I went to plan B - which consisted of selling the one that I used least, a few weeks after selling it I realized that the world had not come to an end so I sold another one. After that it became easier to sell them, I am down to just the ones left that I shoot often. It was much less painful than I thought it would be and the funny thing is that I really don't miss them that much. A real plus was that I got top dollar for them and the money is now making 5% in CD's.

drover

Is this the point where you go back to the thread where you answered the question "If you could only have four firearms, which ones would you keep?" and see which ones are going to be left after the "downsizing".

Thanks to everyone for the advice and all the PMs. I didn’t realize how many lefties are out there.

I have talked extensively with my wife and she’s adamant that I shouldn’t sell anything now. I have documented what I paid for each one, the hunting trips I have taken with each one, # of rounds down the bore, serial #s, how much I think they are worth, etc. I probably will start selling them in 5 years or so, but I’ve got a couple more trips to Africa to take in the meantime. I’ve been very blessed where if I lose them all tomorrow, it wouldn’t affect my lifestyle too much, and the stories and hunting memories with friends are worth more than the guns.

I'm only keeping a few. I started giving them away a few years ago. I'm lucky to have grandsons and grand daughters that hunt and shoot!

I've started giving some to my sons and will likely continue to do so. I've got some firearms, like many of you I'm sure, that I doubt I'll ever shoot again. I'm not ready to part with them right now, but one day I might be.
I've told my sons that when I pass away there is going to be a price to pay for the firearms I'm giving them now. It is going to be deciding how to split up what is left and which ones to keep and which ones to sell...I don't want my wife to have to deal with it.

I suggest you start selling them now. Imo, if you didn't hunt with a gun in the last 2 years, you don't need it. Sell all but your favorite 1 or 2. This will allow you to get a reasonable amount per rifle, and save your wife a lot of trouble. We're it me, I'd give them to family and friends.

I sold 75% of what I had some years back and found the same thing, it's not a big deal. If there's anything that I really want back I can buy it and that's what I did with one 10" 357 Herrett Contender barrel. Really liked hunting with it so had a custom barrel whipped up that shoots better than the original, everything else I've barely thought twice about. Thousands invested, a few hundred respent, all around it's a good tradeoff.

I put a hang tag on all of my guns, who is to get them and how much they are worth and what they are, every so often I change what they are worth for the current market value, I hope that helps and help solve some problems sense I will be taking my dirt nap.

I just bought a large collection from an estate (40+ guns with a LOT of black powder guns). Lots of really cool old stuff all the way back to Civil War era (Greeners, Springfields, colts, Winchesters, bespoke stuff, the whole gamut). The kids had zero interest in it and I know it will take a lot of time and research to get top dollar out of it. Without any history on a lot of these, it is a pig in a poke and they wanted to move it all in one shot so it was priced accordingly. The deceased was heavily into the muzzleloading community and likely could have sold most of them for more than I will with just a few phone calls to friends and acquaintances in that world. He knew what he had and who to talk to. I do not...at least not yet.

I looked at another large collection of modern stuff a month or two back. The widow had a family friend that was a "gun guy" do the pricing on the items. It was so botched up it was hard to make heads or tails of how they even came up with stuff. Worked fine for me as they let me cherry pick and I could even break up scopes and rifles. I treated them fair and gave more than they asked on some items because it was ridiculous ($50 for a Zeiss Conquest.....but $700 for a Howa 1500....I mean ridiculous). I think the friends were well intentioned but way off the mark. I am sure they will be sitting on a pile of overpriced stuff until they get sick of it and sell it all for a major discount.

Years ago I was involved in an estate deal but others had been in before me and I bought everything that was left. The folks handling the estate said they had a list of all the guns the deceased owned but by the time they got the contract with the heirs, somehow a bunch of guns were missing on the list (original Spencers, Henry's, Winchesters, etc.). It is amazing what family and "friends" are comfortable doing with a dead guy's stuff.

Consignment can be a great way to go. Probably the best one I was involved with was a 200+ gun collection. The PR inventoried everything exceptionally well, documented which went to family and friends (as per his father's request) and which were sent to me for consignment (I think I sold around 120-130 of them). The family priced the items, I then did my own research and we reconciled the two sets of values before anything was offered for sale. Any deviations from their minimum were discussed and approved prior to selling. When the smoke all cleared they had a higher net than what they thought their gross would have been because I was able to move it online and the market was red hot at the time. Had I tied up a ton of capital to buy them outright and taken on that risk- they would have made a lot less money.

Good on you for being forward thinking and documenting things so well. If I came in to buy your estate I would pay considerably more if I had all the history that you have given your wife.