Another rifle question

Maybe one of you gurus here can answer this for me….. do the “gun of the year” guns that are given out at banquets have any actual additional value as compared to the same gun off the shelf? A guy I know won the MDHA gun of the yr at the banquet this year. It is a nice browning a-bolt chambered in .308. The stock is engraved with the MDHA logo and the year and “45 of 60” or something like that.

Is this a gun that will actually increase in price in a few yrs(like many people who have never won one claim)or is it just another gun, or IMO, actually worth a little less than a non-engraved version. No being a collector/investor, I view it as something less desirable than a plain stocked version.

Is it a gun to shoot and use, or is it better off (or even feasible) to be left in the safe unfired and being turned for a few bucks in a couple yrs?

Timmy wrote:

Maybe one of you gurus here can answer this for me….. do the “gun of the year” guns that are given out at banquets have any actual additional value as compared to the same gun off the shelf?

No. Objectively speaking, if you watch auctions and actual sale prices, commemorative guns sell for less than same model and grade of gun off the shelf.

They are most likely less valuable for the reason you state…

Timmy wrote:

s this a gun that will actually increase in price in a few yrs(like many people who have never won one claim)or is it just another gun, or IMO, actually worth a little less than a non-engraved version. No being a collector/investor, I view it as something less desirable than a plain stocked version.

Exactly. Unless you are a very, very avid supporter of the organization the gun was made for, you don’t want to buy a gun with that organization’s name and logo festooned all over it.

Also, most of these guns are not rare. There are thousands upon thousands of them out there and the big organizations that these guns are created for will put out hundreds or thousands of them each year. Add to that the thousands or millions of the “base model” that are out there, and there’s nothing special about a commemorative.

IMO the best value is to either keep the gun and use it because you actually like it, or trade or sell it immediately for what you can get on the current market. Many people, however, have bought into the myth that these guns are super-valuable and so they have unreasonable expectations of what they will get for a private sale or trade.

Grouse

The only way it would be of more value is if it was specially built something out of the ordinary, caliber one of a kind stock, something one cannot buy off of a shelf beside the engraving..

1980’s and early 1990’s Ducks Unlimited guns new in the box can bring a really good premium.

Generally, for a banquet gun to hold value above normal retail, it needs to be a higher value model to start with. the DU browning A5’s from the 80’s and early 90’s are pretty popular “investment grade” guns right now.

Take the listings below with a grain of salt, but you can correlate these prices with other sale sites on the web to get an idea of what’s actually getting good money and what’s just being listed in hopes of parting a fool from his money.

https://www.gunsinternational.com/guns-for-sale-online/shotguns/ducks-unlimited-commemorative-firearms/ducks-unlimited-commemorative-firearms.c814_p1_o6.cfm