Abraham wrote:TAM,
I understand.
We each have our priorities about what we'll pay for...anything.
Part of my, no sir, nuh-uh, won't do it, regarding buying used guns at what I consider over-the-top pricing is in part based on principle or if you like, orneriness and past experience with "used".
Paying like-new prices (or more) for something used, anything used, just galls me. That attitude is of course a personal idiosyncrasy with no right or wrong with anyone else's approach to buying used. Even if I supremely wanted a "fill in the blank" item, I just couldn't bring myself to pay more for it if it's not a bargain, even if the item is scarce and I was doing the pee-pee dance to own it.
I'm sure my buying used attitude is shaped as it is by 'having' to buy used at one time in my life and such items would generally turn to be mediocre at best or fail me completely at worst. So, I'm left with a bad taste in my mouth regarding used...anything.
I vowed to buy new (anything) the day I could, and have ever since those days of having to buy used.
On an odd side note: When I bought my last truck, brand new of course, I stopped to fill the tank and a young guy filling up next to me, looked at my truck and declared "I would want to pay the gas to drive that thing", he was driving an econo-box car, and I replied I wouldn't want to drive his econo-box either. He was good natured about my response and just grinned. We parted smiling.
Abraham, I didn't grow up poor, but I did grow up the son of a couple of cheapskates. I don't know if that counts or not. To this day, my mother, who is quite wealthy, often expresses money worries - in the sense that one gets the feeling that she can't have enough money to stop worrying about it. She has more than enough money just sitting in her checking account than she can possibly spend before she dies (she's well into her 90s, and quite frail now). She was raised in a fairly wealthy family, but then she survived the Axis occupation of her city, and ate cats and rats while the Axis troops were retreating, and the Allied troops were advancing on it, and both sides were shelling and aerial bombing it.
My dad was the son of a depression-era dentist, who died of radiation poisoning when my dad was just 13 years old, leaving a wife and 3 growing boys. When my grandad was alive, they did OK for a depression-era family. Not too many people could afford to pay money for his dental services, but he often bartered his work in exchange for chickens, or repairs around the house. They did well enough that my grandmother could occasionally hand out a sammich to a hobo knocking on the back door. But later in life, both my mom and dad had good-paying, tenured teaching positions at a well-known university, and we did not lack for much. The boys brought in money from odd jobs, and they raised chickens, and had a victory garden in the back yard. They didn't starve, but they weren't rich either.
After surviving the depression, and in my mom's case, wartime starvation, even after they both went on to have very good professional careers that paid well and gave them a measure of financial security, their buying habits never changed from being depression/war era survivors. Oddly, my dad became a bit of a spendthrift in some ways because he would buy things that he already had, simply because the
deal was too good to pass up. After he died, when my brothers and I were divvying up his tools to put together a tool kit for my mom, and to share the rest among ourselves, we found THREE bench grinders.....two were still new in the box......when he had the third one still mounted to his work bend, functioning perfectly. Yeah, he occasionally used a bench grinder when he was puttering around in the garage, but he didn't use one THAT much. The one on his bench would have (in fact did) lasted him the rest of his life.
For myself, I like nice things, and I know that I will have to pay for them. I am not a wastrel, in the sense that I actually think long and hard about most of the more expensive items I buy - like guns - before I eventually pony up the price for them. I
will try to find a bargain (part of why I posted my NVD thread the other day), but if there are no bargains to be found, I
will pay the inflated rate - even if it is a "used" item. And guns are not like a lot of other products. A well-taken-care-of firearm will still shoot just fine at 100 years old, as long as you handle it properly. And that brings up the "antique" thing........antiques are most definitely used. Would you never buy an antique?
And, "used" is kind of a relative thing anyway, even within the specific class of "guns". I would be a lot more concerned about buying a used .44 magnum that someone had put 2,000 rounds of stout handloads through, than a used G19 that someone had put 2,000 rounds of 115 grain FMJ "practice" ammo. In my world, "lightly used" = "I broke it in for yah". If the G19 in my previous post had been all scuffed up and ugly (I don't mean "Glock ugly", I mean "beat to heck ugly"), only came with 3 magazines, and still had the standard sights on it, there's no way I would have paid $650 for it. As it was, it was in excellent "nearly new" condition, didn't have too high of a round count, had a
$104 set of aftermarket sights on it, and came with 4 magazines. Take off the $104 sights, and we're down to $546 in value. Take off the 4th magazine, and we're down to maybe $525 in value.......and now we're entering the fair market value for a lightly used Gen4 G19
without the aftermarket items. I took all of those things into consideration.........at a time when a Gen4 G19 couldn't be found in any gunstore in the area. Today,
my local Cabelas lists a Gen4 G19 with standard sights and 3 magazines for $630. Add the custom sights that are on my gun, and you're at $734. Add the 4th magazine (
$25 at Brownells), and you're at $759. Add 8.25% sales tax, and you're at $821.62 ......and I didn't include the cost of Brownells shipping you the 4th Magazine.
SO.......
$821.62 for the whole package, new in the box (assuming you could find one that comes from the factory with the XS sights and the 4th magazine).....
versus
$650 for a lightly used example which includes the extra features. Who's getting hosed now? If we were talking about a notoriously fragile object, I'd insist on new. But a Glock? That will shoot thousands more rounds than I ever care to shoot, without ever breaking down?
I think I got my money's worth........particularly since I really like the gun.
If I did any kind of pee-pee dance before buying, I held it for a LONG time before giving in.
I beg to differ.