Sell your guns in Marquette.

Buying in Marquette and Marquette County

The Upper Peninsula is a planned trip rather than a short-notice one, and Marquette County is where those trips usually start.

Twenty-eight licensed dealers across seven towns, and a long way from anywhere else we work. That distance is worth being honest about: the U.P. is a trip we plan, not a drive we make on Thursday, and it wants to be worth the journey for both of us. What is up here tends to be older and better kept than people expect — iron country guns, mining company history, and rifles that came over with families and stayed.

Only 6 of Marquette County's 28 licenses are manufacturers. This is hunting country rather than building country, and what comes out of the cabinets reflects it — used guns, honestly worn, occasionally much better than they look.

The county has no licensed pawnbrokers at all — worth noting, because a pawn counter is where the good pieces usually leave a collection before anybody else sees it.

What collections look like around here

Northern Michigan collections are built around deer camp and the lakes. Grand Traverse County holds 31 licensed dealers serving a much wider area than its size suggests, because people drive for an hour up here without thinking about it. Expect rifles and shotguns that have been used hard and honestly, and the occasional very good gun bought in a better year.

Estates in Marquette County

Cottages and camps are where northern estates get interesting. Firearms left at a family place are often forgotten entirely for a decade or more, and they’re also the ones most likely to have suffered from damp storage. Both facts are worth knowing before anyone agrees a price.

We also cover Ishpeming, Negaunee, Gwinn, Champion, Skandia and Big Bay — and the rest of Michigan besides. If you have something worth looking at, distance is our problem, not yours.

Do you actually come up here?

For a collection worth the drive, yes, and we’ll tell you plainly whether yours is before either of us commits to anything. Send a rough description and some photographs. If it isn’t worth the trip we’ll say so and tell you what we would do instead.

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.