What is my Luger (and what's it worth?)

[lugermom]

Originally Posted by DonVoigt

I'm sure we are all curious about how much it cost to complete an export/import to the US?

There are some lugers in Canada that I've thought about- but the usual answer is that "it costs too much to do the export/import".

It's not all that hard or expensive to do the export/import from Canada to the US, once you figure out how it works. I think if you're only importing one weapon, it's about $300, but if you're sending a bunch, there is a "bulk discount." That price includes removing the gun from the Canadian registry, doing the paperwork, stamping the gun(s) for import into the US, and shipping them to a FFL near you. Once they arrive at the FFL, they transfer the gun(s) to you. I paid $25 each for this service.

So maybe that sounds like a lot, but it's offset by the fact that quite a few handguns are classed as "prohibited" in Canada, which means they can only be owned by law enforcement, military, etc., and their heirs who are grandfathered in IF they can obtain the necessary licensure and meet the storage requirements, etc. (I think the Canadian government is being circumspect about giving out new permissions to own prohibs--I'm not at all sure that younger LE/Military even qualify--would have to check on that.) So as you can imagine, it's an ever shrinking group, which makes it tough to sell these weapons in Canada. If they're not already selling at a fraction of what they'd go for in the US, I think they will be as the number of possible owners continues to shrink.

One other note is that there seems to be a perception among Canadian gun owners that the government will make it impossible to export to the US--they'll tie the whole thing up in interminable paperwork. But that wasn't our impression--the Registry people were generally very helpful. My impression is that while they don't necessarily want these weapons in the country, they don't want the bad publicity of destroying them, either! The registry people even have a page on their website laying out how to do the export.

If it would be of interest to the group, I'd be happy to write up something specific and fact-checked (as opposed to my sort of general statements here) about how to do the export/import. It seems to me that there are probably quite a number of prohibs in Canada whose owners would be ok with letting them go but don't know how to go about it. US buyers who have the information might be able to make some good purchases!