In the late 1950s I would often spend the day at Golden State Arms in Pasadena, Ca. You could buy a Luger for $39 or an Artillary model for $69. Civil war swords were $17 and they had barrels of them. They were cleaning out the arms warehouses in Europe because the European countries needed money to rebuild. You could buy British and other country's uniforms from the mid 1900s for very little money. What you need to understand that for a time there was what seem to be an unlimited supply and the we were dealing with silver backed money. Well, we discovered later that the supply had ran out. I well remember the time I saw an average Luger at a gun show priced at a whopping $100. Was the guy nuts. No he wasn't, I was, or had been. I actually did buy a Simson Luger in a sporting goods store for $42. Sadly I didn't keep it. When I shot it, it would fail to eject the empty case. I read about two weeks after I traded it that Remington Ammo was way underloaded. I have traded off some really great guns for very little money but that one I regret the most.
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