Ok, its not really a gun show, its a huge flea market and yard sale. It just happens to have more guns and gun specific tables than most medium size shows. Those who complain about flea market stuff at gun shows would probably have a nervous fit in a place like this. Better still (or worse), the old informal rules that kind of kept the guns in the area by the bridge have just been ignored over the last coupld of decades. Now you may find a table full of guns up on the main road, right by the police department. In the past I estimated the crowd at a half million, but I think that's wrong, Its probably nearer to 100,000 folks. The good side is you don't have to pay any admission. But you do have to pay to park. Every one rents out the front lawn, and some their back yard too.
At gun shows, you even see dealers with tables, their FFL paperwork in plain sight. No one bothers at Court Days, its all informal.
My gun show pard Joe often comments on the guns he sees, and points out if he saw one of them lying in the ditch, he wouldn't bother to stop and toss it in the bed of his pickup truck. I didn't see any guns I was tempted to buy, but I did look at a bunch of them. These seem to be primarily well used hunting weapons, dating mostly from the 1900s. Interesting. I even saw one double barrel 10 gauge that was kind of interesting. But it probably needed a carriage to move it around. I'd estimate the weight at 15#, and surely was for use in a blind. You couldn't tote it very far.
Better still, all the gun show regulars were in attendance. I saw all the same folks as I see at the shows. True to form, we're all friendly with each other. There was some business taking place, but no one getting rich. Of course I got to the bridge area fairly early, maybe 10:00. When we parked, maybe a half hour earlier, the place was fairly empty. Seems like a lot of folks were on the same schedule.
I sure saw a bunch of 1920s guns. S&W made a bunch of fine M&Ps in that period. They were well represented. Often in better condition than the guns from the 1970s. There were some N frames, the guns that seem to attract me the most. But none from the prewar.
Sure were a lot of tools. My problem with tools is they're too heavy to tote all over the town, and the car is too far to make trips back to.
Last year, our local promoter went head to head with court days. He had a lousy show because of it. This is an spontaneous thing, with no one ever knowing what will show up. I've bought a fair number of guns at this thing over the years. But none today, and I think it might be my mood.
I've determined I've become a snob over the last 45 or 50 years of buying and selling. I've always strived to improve my little collection. But doing that over the years makes me no longer want bad condition guns, or guns I traded off to upgrade. Its worse with knives, and I didn't see a single Randall today. I did spend a lot of time looking at leather. But nothing that really pleased me.
So most of what we bought was socks for grandkids. They'll have warm feet, since we bought a half dozen for each of them. And lots of chinese junk. Some DVDs of kids games and such. My wife opened them on the way home and none have any printing on the DVD, just on the jacket. I'm guessing they're pirated.
And normally we skirt the racial things. Not sure why and I don't even think that's healthy. Mt Sterling is in an impoverished area, right on the edge of Eastern Kentucky. Folks there aren't preoccupied with race and hating other folks. They just want to live and let live. Maybe that's a lot better than the big cities. What we used to see at the old Paris, KY gun shows seems to hold true here too. The old guys all just seem to be able to get along. They don't care what race someone is. If he seems to be interested, he's shown the same courtesy as everyone else.
And one of my other failings is watching people. I was especially interested in a couple of girls looking for handguns. I'm guessing they wanted self defense guns, and even if they had disinterested boy friends, they were asking good questions and comparing guns. Next such event, I'm going to stand off to the side and watch this stuff more closely. I might learn something.
Mt Sterling Court Days
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