Preparing for sales due to emergency

What would happen to your guns if you are seriously injured, or even worse, dead?

When someone is seriously injured or dead, figuring out what will happen to guns is not the priority for most people. For other members of the family and relatives, it is not the most important thing as well.

One of things your collection of guns can provide is some form of money if it can be sold. About half of Americans do not have $500 in emergency in their savings account, which means in case of emergency, something has to be sold off to cover the cost.

Unfortunately, trying to get immediate cash by selling guns will greatly decrease the amount you can get from the market value. Pawn shops are easiest to access for immediate cash, but it also greatly reduces the amount you can get in exchange for convenience. Selling it to gun stores has similar affects as well.

So if you can afford to take some time, you can put it on to consignment and hope that the gun gets sold reasonably fast. If not, you'd have to lower price.

Similar situation happens when you try to sell your guns via person-to-person transfer as well.

Another thing is pricing.

You can't make it too cheap and need to know the value of the gun. If the family is not knowledegable about guns, getting a decent estimate is not easy.

One resource they can use is GunBroker.com

By typing in the make and model, it could give slightly better estimate than just guessing. The prices on Gunbroker has been ridiculed but it does give a starting point. Instead of MSRP prices that can be found(if it is posted on the manufacturers's website) it may give slightly better estimation. One of things you can do is to remind that discounting a certain amount, say 10%, would get better estimate before hand.

Another thing to remind is that custom works do not add value. While the said custom work may mean something to the owner, it probably doesn't fit the potential buyer's taste, and reduce the pool of buyers. This is especially true if it's some custom job done on a polymer gun. There are plenty of those custom works and it doesn't add value.

If it's a rare custom job by a well known gunsmith on a rare handgun, it maybe able to bring in more, but those are far and few inbetween.

Also, it would be a good idea to have list of your guns and the estimated value ready. For surviving families, having any kind of guidance on what to do is a great help. It reduces workload and allows faster sales.

It is very common for us to put off doing it, but having a decent preparedness ready could significantly help those who can benefit from it.