Show Notes
In this week’s No Lowballers podcast by GoWild presented by GunBroker.com, we’re talking with our chief Lowballer, Dave Parris from GunBroker.com. Dave gives us the rundown on really cool items that he gets at an absolute steal on GunBroker.com. Dave is an absolute expert on penny auctions and gives a ton of good tips for how you can find really cool, unique items for a solid deal. One of his biggest assets is the watch list feature, a super easy way to make sure you don’t miss out on your auctions ending for the items that you’re interested in. Logan goes into how helpful it is to add alerts for items he’s interested in, so he knows when they get posted on GunBroker.com. A lot of things he’s into are super quirky or really rare items, so rather than checking every single day to see if something has been posted, the alerts are super helpful for letting him know. Allen talks about the sheer amount of items posted daily on GunBroker.com and let us just tell you it’s a lot! Can you guess what milestone was recently met for the amount of items posted on GunBroker.com? He also talks about how you can use GunBroker.com for gauging your collection's value either for insurance purposes or if you may be looking to sell some of your collection. Dave speaks on the easiest way to do this, create a watch list of all your items and that gives you a pretty solid rough estimate of what your collection may be worth! We end the episode talking about an interesting item selling on GunBroker.com lately. What would that be? Commemorative guns! One of those is a set of Colt Snake Eyes from the late eighties that have sold multiple times recently and sold high! Once the first set sold, the market quickly caught on with an auction ending recently with a super low set, number 36!
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Show Transcript
[00:00:00]
Hi everyone, welcome to the no lowballers podcast. I'm your host, Logan Medish of High Caliber History, sitting around the table with the gunbroker. com and go wild crew. And we know the name of the show is no lowballers and that's really. That's really a touchy subject for some folks, right? And so we've made one exception.
Generally speaking, no low ballers at this table, right? Except for this guy over here. We have our chief low baller. What's the bullpen? We called in the, called in our low ball closer. Yes, exactly. So Alan, tell us who we've got with us today. Today we've got Dave Parrish from Gun Broker joining us and Dave certainly understands the inner workings of Gun Broker being an employee, but most of his knowledge is the hard gain type where he has gone [00:01:00] on and probably won more auctions at the most insane value you've ever seen than anybody I know.
So I don't know anybody who can better give us some tips and advice on how to I'll be a low baller necessarily, but how to find really great value on Gun Broker. So glad to have Dave with us today. Yeah. Welcome Dave. Appreciate you being here. Cool. So how long have you been spending far too much money on Gun Broker?
I started at the end of March. Okay. So that's yeah, just a. Oh, yeah. About four or five months. Okay. Long enough to learn how to do it and do it right. There are packages coming in all the time. FedEx guys on a first name basis, right? Yep. See, the trick as employees, there's no, employee discount or anything.
But here's the difference. When our wives walk in and notice us on Gun Broker, instead of getting in trouble, we get to say, Honey, I'm just working late. It's just work, yeah. Yeah, you're just a workaholic, and you'll be like, overtime, that's, what they don't realize is that the overtime, they gotta pay for the habit, right?
Yeah, it's she's been used to me [00:02:00] before, though, so she's not too terribly surprised. Gotcha. Yep. So what's the most recent cool thing that you've managed to pick up that kind of surprised you? I guess overall it's recent because it's constant ammo. I've gotten so much ammo off the penny auctions it's not even funny.
So you pay a penny, you pay shipping. Get, four boxes of Winchester double aught buckshot for 12. 95, because that's the shipping. Yeah, it's crazy. The penny auctions are fun fun. And Dave, you're picking up some mainstream stuff, like you said, double aught, 12 gauge, but you also, of course, have a kind of eclectic collection, so you're finding some of the little, or you're just telling me some, what, 32 Smith Wesson you've been through, so a little bit more of the eclectic stuff, too?
Yeah, I got 11 rounds of period correct. He said it's about 1918, 32 Smith and Wesson. I can't remember the headstamp, I haven't played with them yet, but I would not fire them. Yeah, that's the caveat here, right? But I will own them. Oh, yes. Yep. Yeah and then, most [00:03:00] recently not super valuable, but I got a Hopkins and Allens pre bankruptcy, so pre 1898 hammerless they didn't promote it, they didn't sell very well.
I like those. Yeah, absolutely. It's What do you call them? What's the word? Oh, sleepers. Like sleeper auctions, right? Where people are just flying under the radar, right? Yeah. Very cool. Yeah, my watch list is if it's 200 on a that's a bad day. , if I'm only one, the three hundreds are really lot.
Little more typical for the kinds of items that I'm watching all the time. This is a hundred, man. Those are rookie numbers. You gotta step it up, right? . So explain the watch list to us. Some of us might not, know how to use that or what that function is on good broker. So when you're scrolling through and you find something you like, maybe you don't wanna throw a bid out right now, you just click watch.
Boom. Shows up in your watch list. You can get emails and alerts like that set up and it's really anything listed on gun broker. You can watch it. So if you're like Who the hell's gonna pay this kind of money for this throw it on your watch list cuz [00:04:00] somebody's gonna pay more than that for it So yeah, and then there's you know, certain items that relist I've got my little nichey.
I collect like Late 19th century, early 20th century pocket pistols, mini revolvers, things like that. I'll watch them because if it's an auction, you come up on the last 15 minutes and there's no bids. There is no sniping on Gun Broker. No, because of that 15 minute rule, right? Because of the 15 minute rule.
However, if you wait until that last 5 10 minutes and hit them with the bid, the chances are... You're gonna get it, and I've gotten quite a few things that way yeah. Yeah, that 15 minute rule is interesting, because that's something that is unique to you guys, because eBay doesn't have a 15 minute rule, so you have that sniping that goes in there, but I, but you guys, with the 15 minute rule, really allows a fair playing field for folks.
Oh, eBay counts on that sniping rule. The number of times my wife, and even me, I'll admit, have overpaid for something, because my budget is this. [00:05:00] Oh crap, I got outbid at the last second next thing I know I've paid a hundred bucks more than I planned on because you get that little, 90 second bidding war at the end and that's no fun for anybody, no. The seller enjoys it. True, I'm sure they do. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, I think sellers probably hate me. At least they're making something out of it. it's a buyer's market. If they shouldn't have put it at an auction if they weren't comfortable for it selling low, right? And that's, I am paying what you asked.
Fair enough. Absolutely. I'm paying what you asked. You asked for a penny. Here's a penny. Where's my ammo? Give me my stuff. That's funny. Yeah, that's probably a good jumping off point there too. The penny auction, you've talked about how that's a great deal. You've certainly cost me some money by explaining penny auctions and how they work.
Yeah, it's gonna cost me some money. Oh yeah. So talk a little bit about those and how, what kind of a strategy that has. With the penny auction it literally opens at a penny. You've got all your shipping and fees and Uncle Sam's taxes at the bottom, but it starts out with a penny. I've seen all kinds of [00:06:00] things.
These we've seen Barrett's come up on a penny auction. Really? What? Now, they're never selling for a penny. Yeah. Never selling for a penny, but it gets that interest going. And then, they, when you filter out, you're going, Oh, a penny? Who wouldn't bid a penny? That's as Alan said it's a bit of a trap because now you're at a penny But yeah, you can bid you can watch on those and see what happens.
That's how I'm getting all this cheap ammo So I'm just watching it right down to The last 15 minutes is that reasonable price for shipping versus what I would pay down at my gun shop. Yep. Yep Okay, I'm going for it
Yeah, it's you will, you can get into some bidding wars there, but if you watch those, especially towards the end, I'll watch them all week, but still, you get towards the end and that's where you're going. And I will let everybody know all times are Eastern. Okay, so I'm out of Idaho.
Oh, so that's, makes a big difference to you. So out [00:07:00] here. It's only nine o'clock. I'm not even ready for bed yet. Yeah. What's the biggest steal on a penny auction that you've gotten? That's geez, that's hard to say. Because I've gotten flash flashlights. I got a, an SB tactical brace for an HK.
Don't own an HK. But Not yet, right? He's watching a dozen of them now. If I can get one for a penny. Yeah, and ammo, I would have to say I know I keep beating that dead horse, but it's... That's a sweet spot for it. It is great. Yeah. How many, okay. Now, how many guns do you buy? How many guns does a normal person buy in a year, versus how many boxes of ammo, right?
None of us are normal. We have no frame of reference for that one. Oh, no. When I had to count that up and go, ooh, I bought eight? Eight? Eight guns? Three or four months? Okay. Yeah, I have an FFL, so things have gotten stupid, nice! Yeah, you can still count. If you can count them, I think you're probably...
Yeah, if you can count them on two hands, because you figure that's less than one a month if you average it [00:08:00] out. If you have to start bringing in toes or a friend... If you use those two hands to put them to an Excel spreadsheet, does that still count? Sure, I said two hands. I didn't specify.
Yeah, the penny auctions really are great deals. We don't want to make it sound like everything goes off dirt cheap on there because a lot of things like the Barrett's will get to, their end price isn't really that far off from what a normal, opening bid would be or a final bid or a buy it now price.
Sure. You do though occasionally get some pretty good deals. I say on average a penny auction probably 10 to 15 percent discount, over what a buy it now price might be. So it's usually a good starting point for a deal. They're not all going to end up, the steel of the lifetime, but you can still find value in just your average penny auction as well.
Yeah. Yeah, one of the things that I really like is cause I've got some odd interests as you might imagine. And I don't want to always have to be daily going through and searching for this stuff. So I put in alerts for keywords and stuff, especially 'cause it's, some of the stuff is [00:09:00] weird enough that I know they're not gonna pop up like maybe once or twice a year, so I don't want it to be in there 365 days a year looking for stuff, and I just wait to get the alert email.
, and and the volume of stuff that's listed on a daily basis it's just impossible to keep up with without Oh, yeah. Using some of those tools like the, alerts are great. Yep. Absolutely. What is the average number of items that Gil listed in a day? Oh boy. Tens of thousands.
It's in the thousands for sure. And it will vary. We have a couple of our major sellers that will do a two week cycle, so we know on this given Monday we are going to see a massive upload from those folks. And we know the next Sunday there won't be anything, but then the following Sunday we see a massive spike in sales because that's when they all close.
It varies all over the place. And between that and we, the listings number is always a hard one for us to answer because there's so many variables that it could, at any given time between realists and you'll also have a number of retailers who will list their virtual inventory. So what I mean is they don't necessarily have the gun.
In the safe in the back room, but if you order it from them, they'll place the order from their [00:10:00] wholesaler and ship it directly to your FFL that you don't know anything that's going on. The timing is still just as quick as if he had it on a shelf. There's thousands, probably on certain days, pushing tens of thousands of new listings going up every.
every day. We hit 1 billion in 24 years. Would we hit 1 billion like two months ago, a month ago? Yeah, it wasn't that long ago. I remember seeing the announcement. And that was a piece of archery equipment, wasn't it? Surprisingly, yeah. Yeah, but that's a testament. You mentioned knives and flashlights and different things that you've gotten with your penny deals and stuff.
So yeah it's gun broker, but it's like everything. Boom, and pointy, and stabby, and slashy, and... When we saw we were coming up to one billion, we internally all started joking, maybe, hoping not what some of the stuff might be the one billionth listing. We're like, with our luck it's going to be a grip screw, or a detent spring, or...
A detent spring would have been pretty funny, but there's guys out there like you, you mentioned last night, you're like, I'm the kind of guy, if I find a detent, [00:11:00] oh, got to build a new gun. There's one guy out there looking for an excuse to build a whole new gun because he found a detent.
It's wasteful. There's a perfectly good spring right there. You should put it to use. Absolutely. By that logic. Last time I moved, I found three detent springs that had sprung throughout the air. They were all sitting on top of one of my bookshelves and I'm like, Oh man, I can't build three like that.
The wife will kill me. And with the move, it's but I like that thought process. And that's why, you said you bought the brace, the gun's coming next. So that's, yeah, I I was telling Alan on the drive over here, it's the. The 410 buckshot shells that I bought, I get them home and I'm going I only have a two and a half.
So now I had to go buy a shotgun, that'll take three inch shells. That's just how it has to work. Absolutely. But on that one I saved it was just a Mossberg 505, but I actually saved a hundred bucks over. An unnamed big box store that if it's a brand new item, I'll go online, I'll look at all that, what's it gonna cost me to order it from this [00:12:00] place? And I've done that a few times on some new stuff where I'm saving 50 to 100 bucks off. Where I would buy it anywhere else. Sure. So and that adds up, people don't think about it But but that adds up, you know that covers your shipping costs or it covers your sales tax or you know it all makes a difference and learn like I said learn the value looking at the big box stores or the online retailers for the value stuff I think that really transitions nicely into the next thing we want to talk about is being able to use gun broker to help value your collection.
Oh, yeah. Whether you're thinking about selling it right now or not, maybe you're looking to get a new insurance policy on stuff and, we just took possession of my father in law's collection cause he's moved into an assisted facility. I've got his rather sizable amount of firearms on hand and that's exactly what we're doing is trying to figure out.
Because that way his kids can decide what they want to keep, maybe what they want to sell, what what makes sense to pass along here and there. So I'm really interested in learning about this one. Sure. Yeah. That's something you could do with that watch list. It's an old saying, you go to the pawn shop [00:13:00] and they're like, yeah, that's what they're asking.
What are they getting? Yeah. No, cause I can ask. 100, 000, but I'm not gonna get it or 5 million for a revolver. Yeah, for the 1917 from Indiana Jones. If you don't know what we're talking about, you have to go and check out a previous episode. Yes that one is crazy. But yeah, you can just go in there and you can check out all the, what's actually sold.
And those kind of valuations. Which is fun. Just on that note, that's something that I'll do to reverse engineer that process. A lot of them, on your older guns, your curios, your things like that, the seller will actually list the serial number. And in the images you can see all the proofs and things like that.
I've run into a couple who have no idea what they're selling. I will pay 130 for that revolver. I have no problem paying for that because you don't know what it is. And then you hope nobody else is. Trying to figure it out. Yeah, I there are four or five guys out there customers. I can't [00:14:00] assume that they're guys and we're in the bidding war every single time for my weird little Nietzsche revolver.
There's two of you out there. There's in there's that guy again, right? Yeah, that's funny. So there's been something interesting that has been selling on gum broker that, that are things that commemoratives, they're not something that we necessarily think of as bringing big bucks.
But you guys have noticed an interesting uptick with a certain group of commemorative guns that have been selling recently for a surprising amount. We have a few months ago, we saw the first of the colt snake eyes sets come out. Now these were commemorative sets released back in the late eighties, I believe.
89, there you go. Yep. They were colt pythons, a Dave, more about them than I do. All right. I own two of them. I don't, yet. The full set came out. They are colt pythons. They are the only python that does not have a python roll mark on it. Two and a half inch barrel. They are a matched [00:15:00] set.
One is blued. One's in stainless. Three... They're really quite strange because they come with all of this stuff. They have consecutive serial numbers. That are set up in a way to be 1, 2, 3 eyes. Eyes 1, 2, 3. And they come with this big display case. It's a diorama. It's what it is. It's a lighted display case.
It's got poker chips. It's got playing cards. It's got dice. And it's, we're just seeing so many of them right now. It's really incredible. Yeah, we saw the first set list and we hadn't seen one list for a long time. And it hit a couple months ago and went for just under 30, 000. Wow. And apparently There's a lot of people who have them in their watch lists, like Dave, and just went, holy crap they got what for that, and I got one, I'm going to list it.
So then we saw another one drop on, and we saw another one drop on, and in the, I think we figured the last two months, we've seen 10 sets go on now. So at 30, 000 though, what was the list price originally? [00:16:00] Ooh, boy, that's a good question. They listed pretty, from the second set on, they listed pretty stout to begin with, but I don't know what that first one started out at.
The first one was your value. That was I think 29 and change. So that's, if you wanted one, that was the way to go. After that, they've been more of the mid thirties, the high set, which was they were only 500 sets. So they're serialized, one of 500, two of 500. We had a set, I want to say in the four hundreds go for 55, 000, but on average, they're 30 to 35, 000 right now.
The one I'm interested in watching, we just listed it set 36 of 500. So they're all different sellers. They're all that's the interesting thing is that it's not one guy who's just pulling them out of his basement and selling them all it's somebody saw it go off. Their eyes got really big and went. Yeah, I don't need this anymore.
And it's just been trucking along. So yeah, they went from really no movement in the market. 10 of 500 are now in the wind. So that's really wild. That's, pythons always bring big money, but they don't necessarily always bring that kind of big money even for two [00:17:00] pythons, so that's really interesting that those are going for that, and it'll be really cool.
We'll have to double back on after number 36 closes, because I'm sure. That one's gonna come in, after the eighth set got listed, we did a little bit of a some some articles on it and talked to it through gun brokers articles page and explained what the sets were and talked about the listings.
And we thought we had it covered and now we're already on a date by two auctions. So it's absolutely amazing. Yeah, very cool. Guys, I appreciate you coming and spending some time and sitting around the table with us. Many thanks to our chief low baller who has come and joined us, Dave. If that is not a placard on his desk from now on, it needs to be chief low baller officer, low balling officer in charge, yeah.
But I appreciate you guys coming in and spending some time around the table. One thing I would also like to tout on Dave's work, he's also the master of our Wikipedia page. So if you are looking for information and looking for big sales data, sales information, just Wikipedia is a really great resource for that.
Something I [00:18:00] never really understood until Dave showed me the light on that, but Wikipedia is a really solid resource for researching some of your gun information. Yeah, definitely. And I work in all those back channels, too. Okay. Firearms projects and stuff, gotcha. I'm gonna go on there and find some obscure item and see if I can figure out what your name is.
Don't tell anyone. Cause then you'll know oh, now you're bidding against David. Oh, on Gun Broker? Yeah.
Nope. Dave's nope, bring it on, you're never gonna figure it out. Nope. It's gonna be something like Princess Kitten 493, something ridiculous. Dude, we gotta build a new account. If someone out there actually has Princess Kitten 493, that would be hilarious. Uncool, man. I know. Burned. I know.
Yeah, I'm just that guy. I'm that guy, but we appreciate you all being that guy and gal and tuning into the no low ballers podcast. Make sure you're subscribed on your favorite platform. Give us a leave us a [00:19:00] review, leave us comments. You're not going to hurt our feelings one way or the other.
We love a good comment section, so bring it on. We want to hear it all. Again, thank you to everyone for joining us and we will see you right here on the next episode of the no low ballers podcast.
