My dealer gets a table at the show and I was able to get an exhibitor’s badge from him, so I got in at noon on Friday. Since the aisles weren’t crowded and a number of the tables were still not set up, I was actually able to get through the entire building in about five hours, which is a record for me. Unfortunately I didn’t find anything that struck my fancy enough to buy.
I skipped Saturday so I could let my feet recover some and went again on Sunday. I did find a few items to buy but none were firearms. Prices were simply too high on anything that I might’ve been interested in. That seems to be a chronic problem at the Wanenmacher show – vendors jack up the price, figuring that with the thousands of people walking buy, there will be a sucker in there somewhere. There can be bargains but they are that much harder to find.
I had better luck at the Grand National show in Tulsa at the end of February. There I found (at good prices) a Texas Commemorative M-544, a 4” M-586, and an oddity – an M-15 that a gunsmith had rebarreled and converted to .22 Hornet. It doesn’t look like factory Hornet ammo will work because overall length is too great for the cylinder. However it came with a partial box of handloads, put together with Hornady .22 Jet bullets that result in a shorter overall length. I haven’t had a chance to shoot it yet.