Dick,

You are facing a situation that many of us (or our spouses!) will have to deal with at some time in the future- how to best dispose of our firearm collection.

Auctions are terrible for the seller generally. Auction houses charge 25-30% commission to sell and are up to 20-25% buyer's premium charge in addition to "handling" charges added if they package and ship the firearm. So, auction companies are making around 50% of the sale price of these firearms sold! Amazing.

Selling on Gun Broker is not bad but they charge around 10% of the selling price. A local gun show is good but you don't have the national exposure like an online auction or Gun Broker has.

But, if you have owned these for a while, they have undoubtably increased in value. So, a little cost for selling them isn't bad. If you sell them, though, you probably don't want to give them away. You, like most of us, will want to get a fair current price for them.

I, honestly, am always looking for a bargain. I mostly search and search for a piece that has hidden value and rarely want to pay full price for an item. If I was collecting and trying to fill all of the types of a specific  series or model, I may want to pay full price or more for that one piece I need to fill a hole.

So, I wish you well in figuring out what approach you will take to start selling your hard-earned collection. What you choose to do might help us decide how we deal with the same situation in the future!