Has the market for average Parkers bottomed???

[JLoew]

Given my work, both in private sales and with the consulting I do with Morphy's I can confidently say that I handle as many or more Parker shotguns in a given year than anyone else in the country. Between buying, selling, appraising, and studying, I am in the market literally 365 days a year and many times 24 hours a day. Just like any market, it changes from minute to minute, day to day.

The guns that are the softest today are the very ordinary and mundane guns. Why would anyone stretch for a VH 12ga with 30" barrels that has less than 50% condition? Literally there are hundreds and hundreds of them for sale at this very moment all throughout the country. Just like there are literally tens of thousands of beef cattle for sale all around the country today. These guns, just like the cows, bring a certain price and that is it. There is no upward momentum for them. There never has been- and why should there be? There is plenty of supply that is met with very little demand.

The greatest change I see in the market today is NOT that there is a lack of new buyers, however, there is a lack of uneducated buyers who run around buying like chickens with their heads cut off. Today's savvy buyers are hiring people (like me) to help them buy and to vet things to make sure they are buying at a reasonable value for money. In 2019 I made several new clients who have given me their wish lists and I help them find what they are looking for. If possible, I source their wish lists and stand behind what I am selling them, with my reputation and checkbook on the line to back it up.

In the days before the internet, the visible supply was much lower than it is today so there was a perceived scarcity for certain things. With the internet, you are able to see a much broader swath of the available supply, and thus common guns that were regionally rare are not perceived as rare anymore (think BHE grade 12 bore guns in rural mid-west). There are probably 6-10 BHE 12ga for sale right now on the net as where 20 years ago a guy could go to 6 gun shows a year and only see 1.

In conversations with my friend Steve Barnett, we both commented how 2019 was the very best year we had ever had in the gun business. Selling the more rare and collectible guns is as good now as it has ever been. Selling pedestrian guns, for which there was never much demand, is not hard today, its simply a matter of finding the right price at which it will sell. The run of the mill VH 12ga gun isnt going to bring what it brought 6 months or 6 years ago, and neither is your Amazon stock or your feeder cattle.

In the May 2020 Morphy Auction we will have Carl Balderson's estate collection of fine Parker shotguns. Carl collected a number of wonderful small bore guns, many with rare features. Many of these guns are in fine original condition. It is certainly going to be the greatest offering of fine American Sporting Shotguns in the last 5-10+ years. I am completely confident that the guns will be met with plenty of demand given their quality, condition, and configuration.

The very best guns are still selling with ease, and so are the mundane guns. The simple fact of the matter is that on the mundane guns, the only reason to compel a buyer is through a low price. The best guns speak for themselves and their realized prices continue to do the same.