[carguychris]

I went to the big Dallas show over the weekend, and my observations mirror Skans' for the most part, which I find quite interesting. However, I went on Sunday to miss the rush.

I would like to add a few other observations, which IMHO are particularly interesting since I was there late in the show.

12. Seemingly every vendor had marked up every single >10rd pistol magazine. In many cases this was very obvious; many vendors had crossed out the old price and written the new one next to it, or written over black ink with red marker. The average increase seemed to be ~$15/ea.

13. Big vendors with lots of pistol mags told me that new or lightly used mags for common >10rd pistols had been flying out of the display cases at a furious pace. However, less-common mags were still plentiful, and I could hear the proverbial crickets at many small tables with a few loose, dirty, and hard-worn "Mystery Mags" for older >10rd pistols. I believe that people were snapping up mags for pistols they actually own, but few were buying random mags simply for possible future resale.

14. A few vendors had marked up your typical formerly $400ish CIA "parts kit" Romanian and Bulgarian AK's well past the $1,000 mark. However, most potential buyers seemingly weren't taking the bait; I saw several people walk up, examine a rifle, look at the price tag, scoff, and walk away. These vendors still had plenty of the rifles left when the show closed.

15. Many boxes of large rifle and a few boxes of large pistol primers could be had, but vendors told me they had sold out of small pistol and rifle primers within an hour of opening on Saturday.

16. Tactical-style shotguns = crickets. (This observation is the only one that seems to directly contradict Skans.)

17. Vintage military bolt rifles = more crickets.