For executors and personal representatives
When there are firearms in the estate.
They aren’t furniture, they can’t be handed to a beneficiary the way a wristwatch can, and they won’t go in a house clearance truck. We buy them: one visit, an itemized offer on the whole lot, and the firearms gone the same day.
Most of the value in a firearms estate sits in a handful of pieces, and they’re rarely the ones anybody in the room expects.
What we do
We’re a licensed dealer buying for our own inventory. That’s the whole relationship, and it’s worth being plain about it: we’re not an appraisal service, and the visit exists because we intend to make an offer and take the firearms away.
- We buy the whole lot. Not the four pieces worth catalog space — everything, including the ammunition, the optics, the reloading bench and the safe. The parts no one else wants are the parts that stop a property being cleared.
- An itemized offer, in writing. Every firearm listed with what we’re paying for it, dated and signed, so the estate can see the number is built rather than guessed. That’s the document, and it’s part of a purchase.
- One visit and one payment. We come to the property, work through the collection, make the offer and pay on acceptance. Cash, check, transfer — whatever suits the estate account.
- The property is cleared. We remove everything we buy the same day where we can, so you’re not arranging a second trip for a safe.
If an estate needs a formal appraisal for tax or litigation, not a sale, that’s a paid service and a different job from ours. Say so at the outset and we will point you at someone who does it, rather than both of us discovering it halfway through an afternoon.
Why the numbers are usually wrong to start with
Two things go wrong in almost every firearms estate, and they pull in opposite directions. Families overestimate the ordinary guns, because a name like Winchester carries a reputation the individual gun may not. And they underestimate the quiet ones — a plain-looking revolver, a .22 no one thought about, a rifle with the wrong-looking stock — because nothing about them announces itself.
The result is an estate where the inventory is roughly right in total and completely wrong in distribution, which matters a lot when the pieces are being divided instead of sold. Getting it listed properly, item by item, is the part that protects everybody.
Where we go
Anywhere in the country. Across Michigan and the Great Lakes it’s routine and usually the same week; further out, we plan the trip around the estate. County by county if it’s useful.
Common questions
Do you buy the firearms, or just value them?
We buy them. We are a licensed dealer purchasing for our own inventory, not an appraisal service — the offer is the reason we come out. You get an itemized breakdown showing what we are paying for each firearm, so the estate can see the offer is not a single number pulled out of the air.
The estate needs a valuation for the file. Can you do that?
Our itemized offer is a written record of what a licensed dealer will pay, dated and signed, and for most estates that is exactly what the file needs. If the estate requires a formal appraisal for tax or litigation purposes rather than a sale, that is a paid appraisal service and a different job — we can point you to somebody who does that work.
What if the family wants to keep some of them?
Normal, and no problem. Beneficiaries take what they want and we buy the rest. We would rather know at the start than find out at the end.
How quickly can you come out?
Within the week across Michigan and the Great Lakes, sooner in southwest Michigan. Anywhere else, we plan the trip around you. Tell us where the property is and roughly what is there and we will give you a date rather than a maybe.
Do you take the safe as well?
Yes, along with the ammunition, optics and reloading equipment. An empty safe in a basement is usually the last thing standing between an estate and a closed house, and it comes with the purchase.
If it’s easier to send this to a family directly
Worth passing to the family if it helps, and free of anything that reads as a sales pitch: you have inherited firearms ·what determines what a gun is worth ·what to do with the safe ·what a dealer will actually pay