Every January we put out our annual outlook for collecting military firearms for the upcoming year, so here we go…
2023 Outlook
We expect 2023 to be a fair to average year for collecting. We expect things to be seasonably active through to June then we expect things will slow down over the summer and most likely into the fall as well. For the past 6 months, there have been strong head winds from a very wobbly economy, inflation and recession fears. While things seem to be a bit less dire for the moment, these concerns certainly have put a damper on the overheated collector market and the crazy prices that we have seen for some popular items such as “Black Widow” Lugers seems to have come back down to where they should be. Going forward we think that the demand for the very desirable “Blue Chip” items such as 1911’s, Lugers & Walthers will still be strong, but the prices will not get out of hand.
You may have noticed that the overall quality of items being sold by others in the marketplace has declined considerably and much of what is being offered is hack grade and not up to our standards. Bills have to be paid and if you can’t find nice stuff to sell its understandable that some dealers would offer poorer condition items to help make up for the lack of quality. We have not gone down that path because we always have the long-term interests of our clients in mind and we just do not feel that we want to compromise our standards. We have been in business for nearly 40 years and because of that long term presence in the field we have a lot of opportunities to source nice things even in a market as tight as the current one.
Conclusion
The market will be strong for the first six months of this year then things may or may not go soft for a bit. Prices should remain fairly steady, not looking for any bubbles or any bottoms dropping out. Some guns will be soft and some will be hot; High Powers and Radoms will be hot, Japanese pistols probably not so hot. We will keep an eye out for trends and will let you know how things are going in our weekly updates which drop on Sundays.
