St. Louis PD sells off surplus Thompsons
 

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/c...498cf8ecd.html

"A local dealer appraised the department’s collection in 2014 at $770,000. It includes rare 1921 and 1927 Colts and a model made in 1942.

Kentucky-based Midwest Distributors will pay $22,000 for each of the department’s 27 Tommy guns, which makes up the bulk of the $618,500 the company is spending to buy the department’s surplus weapons.

A second company, Minneapolis-based Bill Hicks & Co., will buy 1,748 Beretta handguns that have served as the department’s duty weapons for about $221 apiece. The same company will buy a number of 223 carbine rifles and some other guns from the department, for a total of about $597,000."


Class III goodness! :)

Great investment. Retail of those Tommies must be around 1m.

I should think the PC snowflakes would demand it all be melted down.
dju

The wholesale of these tommies is not very low though. The 2nd company should be able to earn higher percentage on those pistols and carbines. Low value item has higher percentage of return, that's almost a rule.

Seems to me if( and it's a big if) the model 21 and 27 Thompsons are in good condition 22k per gun is a sweetheart deal. Just look at any recent auction where a similar gun sold.
They routinely auction out for 30-40 k; add the provenance of knowing where they came from and yep I'd say the company buying them is getting a good deal.

We in the people's paradise can only wave at them as they go by...

Julia sold 4 tommies two months ago. Price varied big time (40K, 35K, 26K, and 23K), BP included. If these 27 tommies could all go 35K, 40K, that's great. If one goes at 23K, that actually a loss (assume it came at 22K), 1K is not enough to cover commission. 26K is probably a break-even... Just general feeling: Earn this money is not easy, not only need to pour capital in and bear future uncertainty risk, also takes lots of effort to move guns around. They mentioned that the pile includes rare COLT 1921 and 1927, those probably can sell high in future.

On the other side, those $221 pistols... selling $350 should be easy, or $375, $400... lots of people could afford it. No risk. From dealer point of view, this pile of pistols should be better choice. Another benefit of these -- dealer could sell them on gunbroker.com to avoid high commission fee from auction houses.

Are law enforcement guns registered and fully transferable?

If they were made before 1986, they should be transferrable on a form 4.
Transfers are under control of the National Firearms Act and thorugh Class III dealers.

The question is, were the guns registered prior to 1986, and I have not seen facts on that...

Here's an article:

http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2...ide-full-auto/

These should be transferable. Otherwise, not only $22K was not wholesale price, it's actually too high in retail.

gunsamerica.com also posted this news, the keys are here:

(1) "Kentucky-based Midwest Distributors has agreed to pay $22,000 for each of the iconic rifles, but they will likely sell the old police arsenal to private parties for much, much more."

-- The wholesale dealer paid $22K per gun on average.

(2) "two 1920s Colt-made models are worth $31,000 apiece. The cheapest gun in the collection, an Auto-Ordinance/Savage M1 from 1942, was appraised at a mere $14,000."

-- That does not sound like "much, much more" mentioned in (1). Not sure how the reporter counted.

(3) "St. Louis police considered auctioning the submachine guns themselves in 2014, and they could have raised considerably more money selling directly to collectors. But finding nearly 30 collectors willing to acquire the necessary federal permissions turned out to be too difficult, which forced the department to pursue an alternative course of action."

-- To find proper buyers, these guns should be consigned to well known auction houses slowly over a few years. That's probably the only way.

Not always; but I would "hope" that the buy did his homework on these!:eek: