Hey guys, for those of you that have been following along with me, you know some years ago I ended up unemployed and continued underemployed until about five years ago. During that time I sold off some stuff, and I haven’t really purchased much of anything recently. Well, today, for the first time in several years, I actually purchased something at the fun show.
Though I do love new guns (who doesn’t?), when at shows, I’m usually on the lookout for bargains. I usually like to look through the used gun tables as I’ve had some very good luck with these, and have even gotten some bargains that others have passed on. One of my best scores was a CZ52 pistol which wasn’t selling because pretty much all the Parkerizing seemed to be gone making it look like bare metal. I purchased it for about $150 and then took it home to clean it and came to find it wasn’t faded, it was actually nickel plated and completely tarnished. Once I finished shining it up and putting new grips on it, I could have easily gotten $600 for it. I could probably sell it for $800 now. Today’s score wasn’t quite as good, but I’d say it’s up there, and once again, I think it had to do with it just looking so ugly people couldn’t look past it. Everyone wants shiny new toys.
What I got today was a Mossberg 500AB with long barrel. I’d seen this thing at the show last month for $250 and passed on it, but later thought about it and realized someone with some time was going to get a bargain. I passed by the same table today and lo and behold it was still there. I asked about it and the dealer said he’d give it to me for $189. I finished walking around the show and came back to take him up on it. Out the door with cc fees, tax and transfer it came out to less than $225.
Now I know it doesn’t look like much right now, but hear me out:
The good:
• It’s a fully functional shotgun and cycles properly.
• I already have a couple of Mossberg 500’s and have trained with them so I’m pretty familiar with it.
• It’s got a longer barrel than either of my other ones so I could use it for skeet shooting or longer range shooting.
• It has an engraved bolt, which all by itself would probably be a pretty costly upgrade.
• The pistol grip stock appears to be one of those that takes AR buttstocks (which I have spares of).
• I have a spare standard buttstock and forearm as well as an ATI folding stock with the folding arm just like the old SKS ATI stocks.
• It came with a side-saddle shell holder like the ones I have on my other two Mossbergs, but this one is a later model where the shellholder slides in and out of the unit.
The bad:
• It currently looks like crap
• The wooden forearm is not in great shape. Once I’ve found the box with my shotgun parts I’ll change it out and probably keep it in case I need it for future projects. I did consider seeing
if I could put a nice wooden stock on this one but I’m going with what I have on hand for now.
• It does have some rust, but once I finish stripping it down and oiling it, it should look OK.
• It only holds 6 shells, and since it’s a 500 there’s no way to put an extension on it without replacing the barrel too.
• One of the bad things about this type of shell holder is that it requires the removal of some OEM parts and replacement with parts to hold it in place. Fortunately, the original parts were in
the pistol grip.
• Another bad thing about these side-saddle shell holders is that they cover up the serial number. That may be one reason these have lost popularity recently in favor of Velcro elastic ones that can be easily swapped. If I get rid of it, I may get rid of the ones on my other shotguns too.
• Currently no heat shield.
• It doesn’t have any sights, or any provision to put any on it. Unlike my other 500’s this one doesn’t even have the little screw holes in the top of the receiver to add a rail so that little bead in the front is all I get.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with it. Like I said, I think the reason people weren’t’ buying it was that it doesn’t look that great, but you have to be able to look at the potential. If I don’t’ have a chance to test it out on Monday, I’ll probably test it out next weekend.
