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Sell your AR you have been holding
- Thread starter JimmyD1
- Start date
I like a man who values his own opinion!
I have 1 it aint for sale
Like all things, its a supply and demand market, except guns have an interesting trend. During panic and potential banning, they price skyrockets.....on the low end stuff. The high end stuff still brings, more or less, what it should, regardless of timing. People that are not gun people, and some people that are gun people, will never understand what you get with a 1300-1500 AR that you wont get with a 500-600 AR. Panic hits and the 500-600 gun is now running 800-1000, and the 13-15 gun is holding at 11-12 and folks buy the cheap one all day long. Ammo, on the other hand, is a different story. I look at it this way. 90 percent of what I buy I plan on keeping for the long haul, 10 percent is usually something to fool with or to make sure I am not missing out on something, and to resell. Some guns make the transition due to finding something I'd rather have, but most all the children stay close. On another note, if we end up really needing these things....a person will not be able to buy one with money as it will be useless, IMO.
I actually tried to do a thread for people selling their AR15. Did I ever get flamed! I had to beg the moderators to do something with the thread as a few guys here were putting their health in jeopardy and nearly having a coronary over this subject.
What makes an AR worth $500 versus $1000? You can build a cheap, low end PSA for maybe $500, stick on some frills and list it for $1000. OR you can build a really really nice weapon, from the same company, but it will not have the frills and you'd be into it for $800. The difference?
Instead of the basic nitride barrel and BCG, you can upgrade to a military issue barrel, a nickle boron BCG and an enhanced trigger group and have a great self defense / SHTF weapon (which is why people buy in times like these.) IMO, that makes better sense than paying $1000 for a weapon with a fancy flash hider, mediocre scope and mount, along with laser etched logos, etc. Either way, you should know what you're getting. In my world, it is better to know about the barrel (twist rate, chrome lined / stainless / QPQ -nitred -melonite, etc); to know what kind of BCG and trigger it has; how many rounds it's been fired (I ain't paying retail for a weapon with 1000 rounds down the pipe.) Generally speaking you get what you pay for... until you start paying for a name. For the life of me, unless you are a professional competition shooter, I've yet to see what a $400 + barrel will do that a lower priced (but really great) Sionics or PSA (FN barrel) won't. At the other end of the spectrum, those $69.95 untreated barrels on the market are good for giving you a false sense of security and might be what you're getting on a $500 rifle.
Much ado is made about the receiver, but if you read the ads, most of them tell you who builds the receiver. And if you study the subject, you find that a cheap Anderson lower is exactly the same as DPMS or Bushmaster. The internals are a different story, which is why I tried in that thread to get sellers to fully describe what it is they are selling. As for panic buyers, they put us at risk for not being prepared and I have little respect for my fellow man that is not prepared right now for the challenges to come. Getting older now, I'm about done experimenting and trying to have the best when firearms are like computers - they get outdated by newer features every 90 days. If the weapon is adequate for you today, it will be like the M1 Garand - still capable of getting the job done nearly a century after the first ones came off the assembly line. So, I'm going to get down to a few pieces that fit into a small safe and concentrate on parts, ammo and decent optics (the older you get, the more you pay attention to those.) In a SHTF scenario, it's kind of hard to imagine what you could trade a $1000+ rifle for, but some part that needs replacing (costing you under $50) would be worth a week's worth of food to the guy who bought a $500 AR only to have it break down on him when it's all he has for defense.
Real question..... Which model would you guys recommend that's already completely built and sub $700. I'm a bolt action and revolver guy. Want something to plink around with but in 5.56, had a DPMS Oracle but gave it to my dad a few years back.
