I caught a ride to Houston this morning with a new friend, enroute to the High Caliber Gun Show at the Brown Convention Center. Never been before and anticipated waiting to get in. We arrived about 10 am and didn't wait at all. Everyone had beaten us there!
Ammo was the big story. Very little .380 available and the cheapest was $49 a box for Blazer. Unless you intended to buy ammunition, you avoided those rows where the ammo sellers had tables as it was difficult to negotiate past them since people were 3 deep all the way around. Lots of $12 per 20 round boxes of foreign .223 going out the door. I saw one guy who had evicted Junior from her stroller and attempted to load 3 cases of 7.62 x 39 into it. Actually he was successful loading it but the wheel casters were not successful in supporting it. Kiddo was bawling at being ousted, Mom was pissed at having to hold the screamer and Dad was bent over the destroyed stroller, trying to figure out how he was going to make it all work. I left as I was embarassed for the guy. Valiant effort.
The BATF had a table there. Everyone avoided it. The girl selling dried teryaki sausage was about the hottest thing in the house and was doing quite a business.
I had probably never seen so many guns in which I had no interest. Very few Smiths, all in all. One straight up 29-2 but it had a scope on it, along with a 57. A NIB 58, except it didn't come with a box, for $1150. A 48-2 for $795 and a long barrel 27-2 for the same.
I saw 4 that were of interest to me, 2 of which I had never seen before. One was a 242 in the box. The other was a model 60-18 which was a 5" stainless .357 with adjustable sights and I think the barrel had a slab side. It was $588 which I thought might be reasonable but didn't know as I had never heard of it before. There was a very clean M&P .38 Special snubby from the mid 60s for $350 and a very early 4" M&P with both of the cartridge markings on it, 38 Special and US Service Cartridges. I think it was a 4th change which I thought was late to have that second caliber callout on it. Maybe not. I was looking for a snub 19 but didn't see any, along with a 360 Kit Gun for my driver. Didn't see it either. Sat with some conservative guys for lunch and agreed that we were all in trouble and that we hadn't seen inflation yet.
Ed
Ammo was the big story. Very little .380 available and the cheapest was $49 a box for Blazer. Unless you intended to buy ammunition, you avoided those rows where the ammo sellers had tables as it was difficult to negotiate past them since people were 3 deep all the way around. Lots of $12 per 20 round boxes of foreign .223 going out the door. I saw one guy who had evicted Junior from her stroller and attempted to load 3 cases of 7.62 x 39 into it. Actually he was successful loading it but the wheel casters were not successful in supporting it. Kiddo was bawling at being ousted, Mom was pissed at having to hold the screamer and Dad was bent over the destroyed stroller, trying to figure out how he was going to make it all work. I left as I was embarassed for the guy. Valiant effort.
The BATF had a table there. Everyone avoided it. The girl selling dried teryaki sausage was about the hottest thing in the house and was doing quite a business.
I had probably never seen so many guns in which I had no interest. Very few Smiths, all in all. One straight up 29-2 but it had a scope on it, along with a 57. A NIB 58, except it didn't come with a box, for $1150. A 48-2 for $795 and a long barrel 27-2 for the same.
I saw 4 that were of interest to me, 2 of which I had never seen before. One was a 242 in the box. The other was a model 60-18 which was a 5" stainless .357 with adjustable sights and I think the barrel had a slab side. It was $588 which I thought might be reasonable but didn't know as I had never heard of it before. There was a very clean M&P .38 Special snubby from the mid 60s for $350 and a very early 4" M&P with both of the cartridge markings on it, 38 Special and US Service Cartridges. I think it was a 4th change which I thought was late to have that second caliber callout on it. Maybe not. I was looking for a snub 19 but didn't see any, along with a 360 Kit Gun for my driver. Didn't see it either. Sat with some conservative guys for lunch and agreed that we were all in trouble and that we hadn't seen inflation yet.
Ed
