What is your favorite gun collecting or gun show memory?

[Krogen]

I have lots of fond memories of good deals at gunshows. But there was more to it than that. A buddy and I had a regular table at the Puyallup show. Breakfast at Cattin's, side of blarney. Hang out at our table and kibitz with friends and customers. More blarney, and deep. Sell or buy? Yeah, sometimes. The best memories are of time spent with like-minded friends and meeting new ones.

P.S. If any of you can pronounce Puyallup, the next time I see you, breakfast is on me!

 

[JeffYo]

Ohio Gun Show w Dad

Geez must have been early 80s and went to a show w dad in Columbus,OH. I had a few bucks in my pocket and was ogling a 686. He ponied up the difference and I took it home. SO HAPPY. Still have her and will be my son's one day.

 

[doublesharp]

I met my best friend at an 80 table armory show in Seymour Indiana. This was about 2005, before internet was common, and the seller was a deputy sheriff who had a world class S&W collection, never seen the internet and they were all 3-500 dollars. I was first in line for a mod 18 pure, box and everything #s. Price was right and I never put it down.

Noticed there was a fellow in the background observing. Come to find out he fished the same honey hole. We got to talking and we had so much in common. Both had been pretty wild youths but had cleaned up our act. Both Christians and Masons as well as being successful gun traders. I buy and sell guns, boats, cars, truck, tractors, real estate as a wam hobby. gf saves lives as a respiratory therapist and knows and is liked/respected by everyone. Hard to get the best of him in a trade and he known far and wide as the gun guy. We are gun show table pards and good friends/confidants on life's problems. Would have never met w/out a gun show.

 

[Rudi]

The time I picked up a Colt SAA, a Python, an M29, and a Luger for $100!! Oh, no, that was a dream. Sorry.

 

[OLDSTER]

Not my favorite, but my scariest. A few years back at our large annual gun show, I was standing next to an "expert" handling a 1911 on sale by another "expert". "Expert" number one had cocked the 1911, and was pointing it just above head high over the crowd. You know what's coming next---BOOM !!!. Both "expert" number one, and "expert" number two have been banned from this annual show for life. The bullet was found lodged in the wall across the room in the "Mens" sign.

 

[Chubbo]

Gun show memory.

This isn't my favorite memory, at a gun show, but the most startling, and most obnoxious. It showed me just how corrupt people are willing to be, to accomplish their purpose.
I was attending a gun show, held in the Lee Civic Center, in Port Charlotte, Florida, circa 2000. I was nearly startled out of my wits when a gun discharged, not 10' from me. No one was hit, and when the show's vendors, came to their senses, they began to inspect their displayed guns, and found several, at different locations in that building, that had been covertly loaded, by anti-gun activists. Those odious irresponsible, activists, used no concern for human life, in their deeds, but in fact did close that show.
Possibly the most ironic, regrettable aspect of that fiasco, was, the people guilty of those crimes, were never held accountable, or punished for them.