Sell your guns in Detroit.

Buying in Detroit and Wayne County

Wayne County holds 130 licensed dealers, and metro Detroit estates are among the largest in Michigan.

Those 130 licenses span 32 towns — 36 manufacturers and thirteen pawnbrokers among them. It’s the most varied firearms market in the state by some distance, and estates range from a single inherited revolver to accumulations built across three generations in one house. Wayne County is also the oldest firearms market in the state, and it shows in what comes out of houses: pre-war revolvers bought when the plants were hiring, war souvenirs carried home to the east side, and shotguns from shops on Michigan Avenue that closed before most of us were born. Thirteen pawnbrokers operate here, more than any other county, which means a good proportion of what we’re shown has already been offered somewhere fast and cheap. The guns that weren’t offered are usually the ones still in the family, and those are the ones worth the visit.

Wayne County holds 36 manufacturing licenses alongside its 130 total. That is enough bench work in the area that custom and gunsmithed pieces turn up in ordinary estates here more often than the population would suggest.

13 pawnbrokers hold licenses in the county. They are the reason a surprising number of good guns around here have already changed hands once for considerably less than they were worth.

32 towns share the county's 130 licenses, which is about as scattered as Michigan gets. There is no one place people bought from, so the paper trail on an older collection runs in several directions at once.

What collections look like around here

South-east Michigan holds the densest concentration of licensed dealers in the state — Oakland County alone has 202, Macomb 176 and Wayne 130 — and an unusual number of them are manufacturers, not shops: better than fifty licensed makers in Macomb, and nearly as many in Oakland. That’s a legacy of the tooling trade, and it shows up in private collections. Metro Detroit turns up more precision-made, modified and custom work than anywhere else in Michigan, alongside the ordinary run of hunting guns.

Estates in Wayne County

Metro estates are often the largest we see. A house that has been in a family for fifty years often holds three generations of firearms at once: a grandfather's war-era rifles, a father's deer guns, and whatever the current owner bought in the last decade. Those layers are worth separating properly, because their values are nothing alike and the oldest layer is usually the one no one has looked at.

We also cover Livonia, Dearborn, Westland, Canton, Redford and Taylor — and the rest of Michigan besides. If you have something worth looking at, distance is our problem, not yours.

It’s three generations in one house.

Wayne County produces more of those than anywhere else in Michigan, and they’re worth separating properly. A grandfather's war-era rifles, a father's deer guns and a recent purchase have almost nothing in common in value, and the oldest layer is nearly always the one no one has looked at.

Where to go next

Settling an estate ·Selling your own collection ·Closing a shop ·What sets the price ·You inherited firearms

One thing worth knowing before anyone looks at it, wherever you are: don’t clean it. A polished or re-blued gun can be worth a fraction of an untouched one, and it can’t be undone.