As if I hadnt already hemorrhaged enough money with the auction from last week, it appears that there’s more to be had. A coworker asked me if I’d be interested in ‘some reloading stuff’ from the estate of his recently deceased grandfather. Ok fine, I’ll look. Digital scales, Redding powder measures, carbide RCBS pistol sets, lots of powder, plenty of bullets, bullet molds, and, of course, the big-ticket item in todays market: primers.

To add insult to injury, my buddy at the coin shop asked if I had any interest in a S&W Shield EZ. Well, no…not really. Until the numbers starting getting tossed around and it became a case of “at that price it makes no sense to NOT get it.”

When it rains it pours.

I have to take the entire lot of reloading stuff, can’t cherry pick it. I very much want the primers, and the assortment of bullets and gas checks are certainly worth picking up…if I can get it cheap enough.

Hayes Otoupalik told me that when you’ve been in this business long enough, you don’t have to go looking for good deals…the good deals come looking for you. Truth.

In addition to the reloading gear, there might be some guns as well. Judging by the collection of reloading gear, there might be a 9mm, .380., a couple Smith K-frames, a 1911, and some varmint rifles.

I am seriously running out of room for this stuff.

A long and expensive week. I wound up spending three days closely following an enormous auction of gun stuff. I wound up buying, among other things, 165 stripped AR lowers.

The goal, of course, is to sell the bloody things to finance other projects…like a land purchase. It takes money (usually) to make money, kids. In addition to the AR lowers I also wound up with a mountain of Magpul AR furniture. This was a liquidation of an AR ‘manufacturer’ [really, an AR assembler] partnership, and everything had to go, go,go. In addition to AR parts galore, there was a respectable amount of ammo but the prices were quite high. I did manage to snag 5,000 rounds of Magtech 124 gr. 9mm for myself, so those will wind up going into the Deep Sleep.

Things that I missed? Well, I bid on almost 200 different lots of AR barrels and got beat out on all of them. Also got beat out on a rather healthy supply of Magpul Pmags. But, I did okay on lotsa small stuff…miscellaneous lots of odds-n-ends. Wound up with a bunch of magazines for guns I don’t even own, so I’ll probably dump the on Gunbroker.

In the end, the goal is to get back my initial outlay quickly, and once thats recovered I can take my time with the remaining items.

In the meantime, my living room looks like a warehouse. On the bright side, though, if there’s a 1994-style assault weaons ban in the next few weeks I may become quite well-to-do.

If anyone is interested, here’s the links to the closed auctions:

• Day One
• Day Two
• Day Three

When you leave the vendor’s store with your two shiny new suppressors, and you have a few other things in your arms as well, and you place the suppressors on the back of the truck box while you unlock the truck….don’t forget that they are sitting there. Don’t get in the truck and drive off. Don’t get halfway to your destination, look at the passenger seat and go “hey, where are the suppressors”. Don’t panic and do a Bat-turn, and drive at excessive(!) speeds to retrace your route.

And, lo, there in the middle of the intersection, were my two boxes. Amazingly, not yet run over by traffic and not taken by passerby.

I was not looking forward to the phone call to ATFE if I had lost them.

How panicked was I? My butt was clenched so hard I’m surprised the seat covers didnt get out of the truck with me.

But, you know what? I checked off the last things on my suppressor wish list – .22(x2), .223(x3), .30, 45, 9mm (x2), Uzi. The really painful thing is…I purchased all of those in the last 60 days. $ouch$.