doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Reducing import costs for pre-1898 guns from UK

I will repost this from a previous line. There are some fine guns on Holts silent auction or unsold lots, some 12 ga, re-barelled, pre 1898 shotguns worth virtually nothing in UK but still beautiful, engraved, functional, interesting. Is there no way to avoid these fees? Couldn't UK just allow them to be put into luggage, as is legal in the US, and transported? Could UK laws be amended somehow to save their industrial art for posterity? Surely some sort of common sense laws could be implemented to redress this injustice.

Gun bought in summer 2025 at Holt's auction:

Hammer:. . . . . . .£400.00
Premium: . . . . . . £120.00
Total. . . . . . . . . .£520.00 = . . . . . . . . . $ . 680.41

Holts associated exporter:
1st Item Non-Licensed 260 GBP x 1.34 = . .$ . 348.40 (reduced for multiple guns)
Cased Gun 45 GBP x 1.34 = . . . . . . . . . . $. . .60.30
Import Duty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$. . . .9.06
Import Tariffs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$. . .76.65
UPS Shipping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .$. . .75.00 (within the US)
Optional insurance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $. . .45.00
Total. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $. . 614.41

Totally costs: $1,294.81

So it appears the cost of exporting a £520.00 gun sold in UK winds up totaling an additional 90% of the cost of the gun for an individual.

UK COMMON SENSE GUN LAWS? 😂😂😂😂

It is not the UK gun laws driving the costs of importing guns, it is the overhead. It costs me far more and is much more complicated than it was in the past. I still import for clients but no longer focus on it as it has simply become more work for less money and there are more profitable ways for me to spend my time.

As to reducing the costs....good luck Gene! I wish you the best in that department.

Steve

Lower import costs would certainly be nice, but it's unlikely to happen.

How much would that same gun cost if you bought it in the USA from either a private seller, FFL or one of the various auction sites & auction houses?

Okay. Plain speech, SKB, as you deserve it. Plain and frank speech from Civilization, down into Barbary.

I can remember the time when the USA were still the USA, but not a Fascist dictatorship. Not the Großamerikanisches Reich under your self-anointed Führer, with the intelligence of an under-developed 8-years-old, and the morality of (at most) a deranged 4-years-old.

Back in the time (these were still the late 1990s and the very early 2000s, but do ye imagine?), I would simply buy long guns in the USA, declare them at the airport of exit and depart with my traveller's luggage (that was *immediately* after 9/11/2001, but back then, there was no Gestapo of crazed goons to arrest me and to throw me into a concentration camp as it is today, or to shoot me on the spot, as they now regularly do - as, by the way, even Hitler's Gestapo never did, not within the confines of the Reich).
Back then, importing and exporting was no big deal.

Today, I would not even send empty cartridge cases via mail (small parcel post) from Europe to the Großamerikanisches Reich. Not out of fear my own safety; I would of course use the name of someone recently deceased as "sender".
But for fear of the well-being of the recipient. The gangstas with badges would just clobber you down in your pharmacy where you regularly pick up your old-age medications, and expedite you into some dark shithole.
You might exit from there eventually. After 4 weeks.
Or not.

But you voted for them. You sadly get what you all deserve.

Carcano

Carcano,
That is not an accurate description of how we got in this situation or why overhead has increased.

Just a few of the reasons: 9-11, changes to international laws regarding not just firearms but international trade in general, inflation over a 25 year period, increased fuel costs due to the war, tariffs, additional paper work both here in America and the UK as well as brokers etc.

It ain't the 90's anymore and the red tape has grown everywhere in the world.

You can't change so you either adapt or quit, I'm adapting.

Steve

Goddamn Carcano, tell us what you really think!

That is some funny shit right there. Absolute Internet gold.

During the drum beat to the creation of our national Gestapo, I warned all the participants on the shooting sportsman website while they were beating the drum for starting the “WOT”, what it would bring.

“Vengeance is mine sayerh the Lord”, well, that didn’t really resonate.
Now we have it, in spades.

Be careful what you wish for fellas, you just might get it.

This. The prices of guns at auction are so low in the UK that they're still a bargain with the added cost of importation. They won't be available forever, buy them while you can. You usually get a discount for multiples, buy two.

I let my import license expire when the UK changed the rules on shipping from using the Royal Post Office to air freight. That jumped the price way up.

It would be interesting to find out whether these are just (similar) national regulations, or whether an international accord of the IPU is behind it.
As to national regulations:
- I knew that in the USA, USPS did carry long arms as a common carrier, but generally not handguns (there ARE some very technical exceptions to that handgun prohibition, yes, and most postmasters are not aware of them). Very old US Americans (80 years plus, I guess) might still remember Railway Express.
- In Germany, DHL as successor to the former Deutsche Post, does not accept firearms from private customers, but only from business customer accounts. No international traffic whatsoever. Ammunition is often sent, but technically, it is interdicted merchandise.