First off, I'm more asking you guys for your opinions on this than I am declaring my opinion to be right. The opinion I'm about to lay out is just that, my opinion. If you don't agree convince me otherwise. Im not 100% sure on it. Think up your own opinions.


Went to a gunshow this morning and had a great time. I noticed there were 6-7 garands scattered about the show. 5 of the 7 or so were pretty nice, and laying in marked CMP cases, with little CMP tags.

All these guns in the CMP cases were $2600 and up. None were excellent, all field and service grades. A  3-1944 model, one was 12-46. The others I didn't see. Cmp rifles in new unused clean cases.
2 Springfield's, 1 winchester. I didn't pick them all up.

To me these guns look like someone paid $8-900 for a field or service grade rifle and then added about $1800 to it and tossed it on the table. One rifle had a delivery date of a month ago on the case.

Does that make anyone else angry? To me that really seems like old dude bought some cmp rifles and now magically wants 3 times what he paid for them a month ago.

When if he would have just let someone else buy it from the cmp they could have bought oh I don't know a whole case of ammo and a gun safe to go with it? But instead they get duped into augmenting this guys SS with the money they wanted to spend on a garand.


I believe in free trade, and I don't think the government has anything to do with it. But I also think picking up a bunch of Anderson lowers for $50 then trying to convince everyone to pay $150 for them like you didn't just pay $50 is a immoral thing to do.

Am I wrong on that? I'm in no way saying the government should step in. I'm not saying anyone shouldn't be able to sell whatever they want for whatever they want. Without suckers pawn shops wouldn't exist.

I don't believe for a second grandpa with the busted out tennis balls on his walker bought 4 garands last month and now something came up so he needs to get rid of them at the gunshow for 3 times the price he paid apiece.
Its not whether or not someone should be allowed to do that, it's whether someone should. Be a dealer if you want. But don't triple the price of something then stand around for a sucker to land in your web. If you want people to buy garands tell them about the cmp. To me the whole thing relies on old dude NOT telling you that "hey you can actually just buy your own like I did for $8-900" Instead both separate individuals wanted to woo you about build dates and how hard these are to find and how much history they have and yadda yadda. Both got real quiet when I brought up a excellent grade can be had for $1200, and a rack grade for $650. I told two other guys that were by me checking the garands out at the same time.

I have bought from the cmp before, and have owned several garands.

Capitalism wins, if garand buyers want a deal they should google it. I'm not garand Batman here to save everyone money. But the whole concept of buy and then convince everyone they should pay me 3x the price is poopy.

rant over

I don't know what bothers me more:

1. Greedy schmoes who abuse the Civilian Marksmanship Program

or

2. Stupid schmoes who are willing to overpay and support the greedy schmoes who take advantage of the CMP

I am completely lost on gun prices in general, Garand / carbine prices in particular. I get they stopped making them a while ago, parts are drying up, blah, blah. But on this forum what is THE rifle everyone is talking about? The AR. Yet few who like the older stuff have to struggle to find deals on their fav rifle while people buy them up as some sort of investment. Remember when carbines were a couple hundred bucks? Suddenly two or three guys at gun shows have three dozen for sale over a grand a piece. I agree it's slimy.
While I'm here, you seen prices on Fox body mustangs!?!?!? I paid like 14K in '89 new, today the same car is 30k??? Maybe Dyncorn will step up and start stamping out body panels....

This about sums it up.

I'll add that own 1 garand right now. It's my keeper. If I lost everything and didn't have anywhere to put it I'd seal it up somewhere only I would ever know where it is. I'm selfish in that regard.

But I have NEVER bought ANYTHING and then tried to convince everyone they should buy it for 3x my purchase price.

CMP must not care or doesn't want to spend time fighting the practice.  You can go on Gunbroker and see the blue tags with serial numbers.  They could stop some of it pretty easy if they wanted to.  

I was in a gun shop in Holland, IN a few weeks ago.  There were 6-7 garands on the wall and all had the blue tags.  They were $1,999 each so some how the shop is getting inventory from CMP.

I was hoping y'all would say "eh capitalism it happens unwad your panties" but now that y'all agree it's feeding my hate


I want to set up a cmp table at the next show to raise awareness on how to buy from them. Just to stick it to the shills.

Why care? It use to bother me then I realized I had my chance and still do to buy as many as I can. CMP cares only to now limit them to 8 a year. Most everyone can buy up to 8. A guy flipping them immediately is no different than collectors that cull and upgrade. Most people that get upset over it totally missed the salad days of CMP sales. They really should be upset at themselves for not snagging some or being born earlier.

The CMP sales program is not certainly not intended for people to make a quick profit.  

It might violate federal firearms laws in do so for an non FFL person.

It is not, however, unlawful for one to sell his CMP rifle at market value when he is done using/enjoying it.  Yes, this can be a gray area, but it is pretty clear that many are flipping these to make a quick profit.

As mentioned earlier, the real problem is people are willing to pay the inflated prices.  It is simple supply an demand.  Of course the CMP could charge more to limit this practice, but then fewer would sell.  The main purpose of the sales is to fund the CMP and marksmanship promotion.  The days of purchasing a CMP rifle cheap and actually using that rifle for competition are gone; the vast majority sold were never used for that any way.

As disturbing as it may be, there is obvious abuse of the sales program.  It might be better the CMP sells as many as possible while it is still possible instead of the government someday stopping the sale and instead destroying them to keep those "weapons of war" "off the streets".

What I really don't like is when people come up to me at the range and want to buy my Garand.

your Garand? don't you mean Garands?

It only fucks one person: the person that overpaid for it.

That said, the Winchester Garand was not a simple flip, they've been out of stock on those for awhile and they bring good money anyway.

Just because it's listed for that doesn't mean it'll sell for that.

Maybe they're trying to equip an entire battalion of WW2 re-enactors?

Doesn't bother me a bit.  People are paying the lazy/gotta have it now/don't want to roll the dice tax. The CMP sells garands at well under "market" value, but you "pay" for that by jumping through the hoops, putting in the time waiting for your order, and rolling the dice on what you actually get in the box. Someone else gets original wood/lockbars/uncut op rod/ME and TE like new; you get a CMP stock, all rebuilt parts, and ME/TE at the very edge of spec for that grade.  If people would rather pay 2-3x the price, take it home today, and evaluate the actual rifle they're getting, I have zero issue.

My bigger gripe is the folks tearing down honest arsenal rebuilds and parts swapping to "correct" their garand - IMHO that is disrupting the history of each gun and reducing them all to just the sum of their parts, but that's my pet peeve.

Been happening for decades.  Once CMP went away from one per lifetime, it opened the flood gates.  Theoretically CMP says you can't or shouldn't resell but that's utter nonsense.  They have no control of the rifle after it leaves their warehouse.  It's your property, do as you please.  The gunshow flippers are preying on those who think they CMP process is to complicated or just don't know.  I still have all of my CMP guns but at some point my estate will sell them, including the 1911.

Rebuilding rebuilds is worse in the carbine world.

I've been buying Garands from CMP for over 30 years and even though CMP frowns on reselling for profit, it's wide spread.
I've sold a few but never bought them for the intent purpose of reselling to make profit.
I've known guys to mix and match parts to have a "Correct" rifle in assumptions it will bring more money.
To each his own I suppose.

I think M1 Garands purchased directly from the CMP are overpriced.

I don't care at all if someone wants to sell theirs for a profit. The free market is after all, free.

Any American that doesn't understand that is weird.

I paid $165.00 for my DCM Garand. If you think I'm going to sell it for that price, you have another think coming.

You're right.  I'll give you $125 for your old clunker; it's used, after all, and 75% of your purchase price is more than the LGS will offer you for it

And you're finding them cheaper, where?

I've meet a local that does this.  

When I was picking up my 2 rack grades, he was at the store doing the same.  He knew more about my rifles then his.  Turned out he went through my rifles thinking they were his.  This weirded me out because I'm thinking he is trying to take parts off my rifles to make his better.  The gun store stopped him, but not before he had inventoried my rifles.  My friend told me to relax, if had been swapping parts from rifles, he could have been accidentally taking good parts off his actually order.

Either way I got two really good rack grades.  Stocks were USGI and CMP.  Both rifles were WWII with good WII barrels.  One uncut oprod.  A few IHC parts.  Only bad part was a heavily pitted op rod, to the point it cuts my hand when loading.

His two rack grades were really rough.  Both stocks were trashed.  Next to nothing of WWII parts.  

He is really interested in both of my barrels and uncut oprod to make correct rifles.  I may have him re-barrel one of my rack grades with a criterion barrel on order.  He does good work, I have one of his rifles before knowing who he was.

There’s a guy here in town that’s been doing it for decades.

Yeah, I think the fudds that buy the limit to flip them are fuckers.

In the old DCM days, the idea was to provide rifles to promote conventional high power rifle competition, prior to the AR becoming the king of the hill in match competition ( back then the M1 and M1A were pretty much the only game in town in service rifle competition)

When the DCM ( a department of the Army organization) was privatized to the CMP, a lot changed. The stated goal of the CMP is still to promote rifle marksmanship and supporting the activities of the CMP takes money. Prices went up significantly, and the number of allowable guns per purchaser got down right ridiculous. I doubt anyone at CMP actually believes people buying an annual purchase limit of rifles is actually keeping them all. For the CMP it means millions of dollars to support marksmanship programs, and they can continue to support the mission statement.

Unfortunately at some point no more M1’s means that revenue stream is gone, and they won’t support all the programs they run on selling t shirts and chamber flags.  They need to get money as best they can, and will continue to sell M1’s until the supply is exhausted ( every year someone claims we are at the end of the line, but another supply seems to pop up to keep the program going)

It certainly won’t last forever.
There were about 6 million M1’s produced, and about 20% are in countries we won’t ever get them back from ( china Vietnam Iran etc)
Figure another 20% combat loss and unrecoverable
Another 20% sold to foreign governments which are not recoverable by CMP,
That leaves about 2.5 million that at some point could be in the CMP pipeline.
Then deduct the guns in VFW and American legion posts and those demilled by the government
No one knows when they will truly run out, and a whole lot have been sold since the 1960’s

People should be able to sell their property at whatever price someone is willing to pay, and it's nobody's effing business, except the buyer and seller. It really is as simple as that.
Capitalism works, and is good for everyone.
Communism and arbitrary price controls (especially those couched in moralistic terms) is bad in every way.

I believe the beef is with the personal ethics of the resellers who take advantage of a program that’s supposed to help proliferate and encourage marksmanship by providing a traditional, accurate military arm below market value to as many shooters as possible from their own arsenal. Has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with simple respect.

I began reading the CMP forums about 10 years ago. Back then the practice of buying to flip and profit was really discouraged by the forum
members. Some posters got really angry when anyone brought up the subject or admitted they'd bought 3 Service Grades, kept two, and sold
the third for a nice sum.

When Orest Michaels was the CMP COO I never got the impression that he cared what people did with the rifles they bought. I read more than
once where he said he couldn't wait to get out of the rifle sales business and focus on the CMP's core mission: Marksmanship with an emphasis
on youth participation.

Anyone remember when the surplus HXP M2 ball first showed up and stories surfaced of guys buying dozens of cans to flip at gun shows? The CMP
didn't worry with it until the masses complained to the point that they imposed a 10 tin per year limit. Then they got complaints that 10 tins a year
weren't enough. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

If you visit the CMP forums now you'll find many threads where guys bought 4 Rack grades, liked 2, stripped the best parts off the other 2, then sold
the 2 they didn't want, often for a profit. I haven't really seen any protests yet either. Times change?

I've kept every Garand I've purchased from the CMP, even the "meh" ones. One of my best friends asked me to sell him one and I told him to go through
the process like I did (more than once) and become eligible to buy directly from the CMP. Help fund their mission. He said it was too much trouble. I've heard
that from other people too.



Eventually I'll thin the herd. My plan is to sell anything slightly under market value. Dumb? Maybe. But, I'll make out OK, and pass along a little something to
the next guy.

YMMV

I understand all that, but I disagree. It has everything to do with both capitalism and with simple respect.
My point is that it's creeping CommieKaren-ism, of which we have a surplus already. Who gets to decide what price someone can charge without being called unethical? From where do they derive the moral/legal/ethical authority to make those determinations?
Because that's really what it boils down to: setting an arbitrary price control based on feelings. Telling someone what they can and cannot do with their own property is about as far from simple respect as possible.  
Someone buying up all the Garands in order to destroy them so nobody could have one is one thing, but these Garands are still being "released into the wild", albeit at a higher price. That higher price is obviously one that the buyer is willing to pay, so again: whose business is it to tell buyer and seller what the price must be?

Selling M1’s does not promote marksmanship using M1 rifles. That ship sailed when the AR15 took over. CMP selling M1’s funds their programs to promote marksmanship.

There are certainly folks whose intent is to flip Garands for profit, which just isn't my thing.  I often wondered how they don't get called out for being an unlicensed dealer.  

However, you aren't buying new guns from CMP, and the condition descriptions for the grades is pretty wide.  It almost encourages buying multiples in hopes of getting one or ones that are what you really wanted.  There are plenty of examples where someone gets something in the mail that doesn't really meet their desires.  

Getting a badly pitted service grade with a frosted bore at the edge of passing TE or MW is not ideal for the collector or shooter, and I can't blame someone selling it to roll the dice on another rifle.  That's why it's nice to buy at the CMP stores where you can pick what you want.  It's just a shame the stores aren't stocked like they used to be.

They used to require that you engaged in marksmanship activities, not just belong to an organization or have a CHL.

I’d say it’s “commie karenism” on the part of resellers watering down a marksmanship program to a collector mentality.

At the price point now you won't make a huge profit reselling. When SG were $300 and the purchase requirements were stricter you could buy  two highgrading the best one and sell the other for $600 getting a Grand for free.

Local surplus store buys his 12 per yr and resells them around +200. I see the same tards trying to sell FG for $2k at shows and no one bites.

"But dear, .... buying Garands is an investment.  I'm just doing it for us."

If you really cared about CMP and their mission you would want to see every garand sold today and they could put all energy and resource for their charter. To promote gun handling safety and shooting sports with the emphasis towards youth. Through the "sales" of rifles they can do what they were chartered for, for many many, many years
No where does CMP tell you that you must take your garands etc to the grave with you. What it does say is not purchasing with the intent for resale. You dont know what the circumstance is behind rifles at gun show. They could be selling on consignment for a widow, someone downsizing their collection or they could be flipping with the purpose of profit
You see the same old over priced garands month after month at these guns shows, they can ask what they want but doesnt mean they are selling

I remember when Garands were being destroyed during the Clinton administration. I would much rather see them out in public hands than destroyed. So if some people resell them, that's better than not having them in the hands of the public

So you have never purchased anything on the stock market?

They do require proof you have done some live fire. I sent a copy of Carbine class completion cert.

There was a stop order put on Garand destruction in 1996.

You can say that sarcastically, and I agree with the humor, however, firearms have proven to be good investments.  

They have a low point of entry ($80 M1, $650 DCM M1D).

Steady increase in value ($1k, $2-3k value now).

Lots of fun along the way.

This has been true for all firearms I've watched.


Another example:  Colt Python cost $350 when new, now valued over $2k.

This has been going on for a while now, and I've run into several people who supplement their income doing this.  Justification being people are lazy and unwilling to go through the hoops of CMP to purchase a Garand and so value the convenience of purchasing dierctly from someone cash and carry at their convenience while there a gun-show.

It's also boarderline illegal as it is engaging in the practice of being a gun-dealer and also aurguably a violation of of the Yellow-Form paperwork, if the intent is to purchase the firearm for payment by someone else.  I have heard stores of higher-volume people getting into trouble with the ATF for engaging in the businesses of dealing in guns without a license by doing this.  Though can't really confirm that.

I've considered doing so myself - I have route.  But as a general rule I just don't like the transaction of selling guns.  Compounded with the questionable legality, and it's just not worth it.

As to the rest - so long as you don't create a shortage doing-so, I guess I can't complain about someone buying, transporting, marketing, and selling for a profit, if the market wants to pay that - and it's not affecting me.  CMP did a policy change a decade ago, under the philosphy of get as many out into the open market as possible as fast as possible; least some rule change leave them stuck holding the bag.  

But yes,  It's cheesy, and legal questionable (maybe), and people who do so tend to be hustlers.  Thing about hustlers, is they are always hustling.

15 years ago I was visiting the old South Store.  I observed an individual I had seen before (but couldn't place him) acting in a frenetic fashion, going to the "window", then looking at individual guns in the racks, then arranging a bulk purchase of ammo, then talking to folks who obviously knew each other.  CMP folks assisted him.  I feel certain he was purchasing four or five individual's annual limits of M1's.  Not long after that I observed him at the Fayetteville (NC) gun show unloading his loot.  I was more or less indifferent to his antics but felt he cheapened the entire process.

I sold on on gunbroker several years back. Should have kept it but I need the funds for another use at the time. Nice LEAD rebuild that I listed for my cost plus the GB Fees as the starting price and just let the market run with it.