doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Outrageous Prices - Over The Top Asking Prices

I paid a visit to Puglisi's in Duluth before Jack passed away. Ended up buying a nice Prussian Daly lightweight from him at what I thought was a reasonable price. He was very forthcoming about how Bill Jaqua was very helpful when Jack was just starting in the business. Of course dealers are in competition with each other to a certain extent, but what I've seen and heard is a lot of mutual respect and friendship. Interesting, I think, in a world that tends to be hyper-competitive.

I am not a dealer, and Tony has saved me several times by paying me fair prices for guns.

I haven't dealt with Puglisl's but when searching on guns international
or Gun Broker his gun's are astronomical prices Something I don't understand as others in the same category are much less expensive.

For those who have dealt with Puglisls perhaps you might shed some light.

Herschel pased away early this year.
He was honored in the presence of his familiy at this years PGCA hall of fame dinner at the Southern.

In general, I'd agree that their prices are high. On the other hand . . . at least when I went there to look around and potentially buy a gun, I got unusually good treatment. The shop has expanded from half a building to the whole thing, including a couple apartments above the shop. When Jack found out I was coming from several hundred miles away and bringing my wife on a short vacation, he said that we were welcome to stay in one of the apartments. And while I did think some of his prices were high, I thought I paid a fair price for the Lindner Daly Featherweight I bought from him.

Want to see outrageous prices? Go to any auction site and search under the word, 'Parker' That should do it.

Don't forget about the guys wanting to sell to us dealers at over the top prices.

so we have to mark it up from there!


John Boyd

John is right that too many sellers want to sell to dealers at full retail which leaves the dealer nothing unless they add to it. Worse yet is that sellers want to buy at wholesale, resell at retail and you have a problem. The number of buyers is going down where I live. Just not as many new shooters buying doubles. Might rebound again like it did 20 years ago. Old is new kind of thing.

The collector market is not that great right now as many longtime collectors are done buying. One Smith hand gun collector I know just decided to sell over a hundred nib pistols at once. That will flood the market in the short term which will either depress prices or make it harder to sell lesser pistols until his pristine inventory is moved. So even market prices are subject to too much downward pressure in the short term and too much is anytime you are trying to sell something.

Jon, I think there are a couple factors that run against the possibility of resurging interest in vintage doubles. Demographics for a starter. That surge basically took place as the front edge of the baby boom generation was moving into early middle age. Pretty good economy, a lot of guys who'd started out shooting and hunting as youngsters, much higher percentage exposed to military service than is the case today. Maybe wandered away from it in college and as young adults starting a family. A couple decades later: more time, more disposable income. And this was all before the American middle class really started taking it in the shorts. There is no comparable generation coming along. People buried in college debt into middle age, then sending kids of their own to college.

And you touched on another factor. Many of us here are already retired. Even if we only have a relative handful of doubles, if thousands of handfuls hit the secondary market, that's going to have an impact.

What happened is that in the first 30 years or so post-WWII, interest in sxs really dropped. Old-fashioned guns. Guys wanted autoloaders, or else an OU if they wanted a double. That was when there was a real buyers' market . . . but not a lot of interested buyers. Then various writers began touting the vintage guns, at just the right time to start the vintage boom. The proverbial perfect storm. Now all we have is Al Gore and global warming.

Larry I know exactly what you are talking about. It is not just guns. Other collectibles are suffering from de3clining interest and lack of extra disposable income. One that I have to deal with is antiques in family estates that I have been dealing with. One had what ten years would have been a hundred thousand dollars plus of fine china and glass ware. Now they would be lucky to bring $30,000. Worse is explaining to the heirs that what they knew the values to be are not to be reached these days. And the market is very soft, meaning that selling anything may take a lot of time unless you are willing to give it away at extreme discount prices.

Not that many years ago I could buy any 16 ga. gun for what we now think of as extreme bargain prices. I bought a Sterlingworth two barrels set, 26" and 28" barrels for $800.00 in like new condition. The second set of barrels had been added to the gun by the factory with an extra fore end. Same seller had a 20 ejector Sterlingworth with 26" barrels and he would not come down from his asking price of $1150.00. Those were the days.