In order for personal property to qualify for a 1031 exchange - Qualified Use Personal Property

You must have held the relinquished personal property for rental, investment or use in your trade or business, and must have the intent to hold the like-kind replacement personal property for rental, investment or use in his business. Personal property not held for rental, investment or use in your trade or business is not considered to be qualified use personal property and will not qualify for 1031 Exchange treatment.

most gun dealers consign your guns at 10% to 20% of the sale price. If they buy your gun collection outright they try to pay you at 60% of the greaded value. (hint watch the grade). Its been my experience that unless you have to sell quickly stay away from dealers. You will probable be looking at 50% of the actual value. They have to make a living to.

Agreed but a lot of Parker Collectors could qualify on the "investment" prong of that test.

We do 1031 exchanges for real estate alot and I bet I could do a set of forms for Gun sales for people who are upgrading their collections or re-investing the proceeds.

I would imagine there would have to be some form of a cost basis that the seller would have to prove for there to be a gain. If I sold my collection of Pre 64 M70's for $X who is to say there is a gain or not?

I think you might have it a little backwards about having to prove a cost basis to establish gain. Worst case, if you were audited by the IRS, you might have to prove basis in order for it all not to be treated as gain. See the prior post about signing false tax returns.

We have several gun dealers in the Lexington KY area that take guns on consignment. Tell them your price and let them have anything above that. But your price must give them room to make 20 - 30% or they will just sell their own guns and not yours.
Gerald

If I net $20,000 on the sale of some guns in an auction, I think I would have no trouble coming up with that much in expenses. The only question is will the IRS let me treat the sale of guns as a business after the fact.

Bill, if you reported the $20,000 sale proceeds from your collectible guns you would only be able to deduct their "cost". That cost, unless you were a federally licensed dealer (not a collector's license) would only be the provable price paid for the collectible. In order to deduct all of the normal business expenses-rent, storage, insurance, etc, etc, you must actually be in the business.