Blue Book of Gun Values

no one uses blue books any longer. they cant publish them fast enough to keep up with the market. and if you read closely youll see they do an average based on key gun dealers nationwide. they control the market. whats happening in between those king pin dealers is totally different. they mean well, but its just not reality.

I think the market is especially fast moving right now. In reading the Blue Book web site, it looks like the thing to do is to take the online subscription, to get the latest information. There was also reference to another page (which I did not go to) about current market conditions.

This is very similar to something I heard on a radio talk show recently about auto service. There was an interview with someone form one of the companies that publishes service information for auto shops. First they published books, then quarterly CD sets. Now, they do only online subscriptions because that's the only way they can keep up with the rapidly changing information and service bulletins.

pardon me but you missed my point. the averages that BB gives are based only on what guns sold for out of 10 pre picked stores around the nation. it doesnt matter if its on line. its based on what their pre identified dealers sold guns for.
its not a valid way to determine true value.
basically BB tries to DRIVE the market by showing and average, not report sales.
if you see a model 12 in ca. for 5000.00 and one in maine for 1000.00, BB averages it out to be a 3000.00 gun nationwide.
thats insane. all the guys with $5000 guns laugh and guys with $1000 guns jack up prices to 3000 next time the BB comes out.

i say stay away from it all together.

Yeah, It looks like I responded to only 1 aspect of your post. It would be more informative if they published a low and a high price in addition to the average, and took input from more dealers.

Whether it's real estate, antiques, cars or guns, regardless of what you use for guidance, the true definition of an item's worth is the price that is agreed upon between an informed/rational buyer and an informed/rational seller.

When either party is not informed, or is not rational, the price may be a lot different from "value."

I looked at the blue book value of my Ithaca Featherlite 37R Deluxe 12 guage. It says $568. But I look on gun broker .com and they look like they are going for about 300 max. I posted some pics on the newbie forum. What do you think?