All of us eventually reach a point where age and/or circumstances forces us to dispose of a collection. I sold mine recently and would like to share my experience in doing this. I had nearly 50 firearms to sell so it was impractical to go to a gun show with a large number of arms at any one time. I opted to use an auction house and after checking some out settled on Amoskeag. Overall, the service was excellent. The staff were courteous and knowledgeable, all phone calls were returned promptly, etc. They charge a sales commission of 15% and this includes picking up the guns at your home, keeping them in secure storage, and paying you promptly after the collection is sold. So far, so good. Beforehand, I had researched the collection and I knew the collector value of each piece. So I anticipated getting the approximate total value of the collection minus the 15% sales charge. However, I ended up getting only about half the retail value of the collection. This was because most of the sales went to dealers. They paid the wholesale and not the retail price as individual collectors would have done. Using the auction house was very convenient, but you do pay a heavy price. Here is the bottom line. If time is on your side, it would be most profitable to sell your guns on line, one or a few at a time, over a period of a couple of years. This would certainly entail some aggravation, but you would end up with much more cash in your own pocket.
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