I used to have a respectable S&W collection of 130+ revolvers. I sold many of them off some 15-20 years ago . . . The prices I sold most of them at are 1/2 their value today. (But more than I paid.) . . .
That is interesting. I have to say that almost everything I have sold to date has sold for more than I paid originally. I think value appreciation has slowed, but not reversed by any means. I wonder how you state the values are half of what they were, but still got more than you paid? It sounds like you bought something at a specific price that you thought was fair and sold for more than you paid. That is appreciation in my book?? Valuation is not an easy number to come up with and many collectors and sellers inflate their expectations by looking at publications like Blue Book and Standard Catalog of Firearms, and of course some use the asking prices found on many gun sales sites.
Using the sources available over the last 65 years, I found that these old worthless revolvers gained just over 7% annually on average. Of course, there were years where where the values grew at over 10% and others that saw only 3% or so. A heck of a lot better than a bank savings account. Is anyone going to get rich by buying a bunch of old guns and selling them years later? Probably not, plus if you factor in the loss of the dollar's value over time, practically nobody has ever made real gains ever.
As Mark Twain once wrote and I have paraphrased - The rumors about the death of collector gun values are greatly exaggerated. The subject of value loss has been stated after every sizeable value gain of just about everything that has ever gained value over time. When I was much younger, I recall that there were articles about what will happen to WWII gun collections, since no one will want them? A few generations later, the same question emerges from the naysayers. Sure some things have peaked and tanked, but those situations were than collector firearms. Beanie Babies is one edxample, but it was simply the result of the law of supply and demand. Everyone seemed surprised when they found out that instead of a "limited" production run of each beanie baby launched, millions of them were actually being sold, so the market collapsed.
Has the rise of values of vintage firearms slowed in the last 10 years, using Supica Nahas SCSW, the numbers support that trend. Will today's shooters who shoot everything black and made of plastic, ever gain an appreciation for early quality made firearms as they improve their discretionary spending situation with age? I believe they will.
