TargetTalk

Targetsport wrote:On the other hand many new potential future shooter will have less and less chance to get in the sport because of financial reasons.

You still haven't answered why, if it is possible to make a top class pistol so much cheaper than the existing manufacturers, someone hasn't jumped in and done it.

My point is the price is either determined by the market or it is distorted by collusion and/or a high barrier to entry. Given the number of manufacturers who either currently make or who could make a competitive pistol if they thought the market looked as highly profitable as you do, collusion seems unlikely. But you never know what some capitalist swine is getting up to, so icollusion is unlikely but possible.

And frankly, the financial barrier does not look all that high - maybe you should go for it. You don't have to purchase a complete CNC shop to begin with. You can use a stock barrel, Walther or some such. Contract out the CNC machine work, maybe work with Herret's for the grips and all you have to do is the design, hand finishing and assembly, and marketing. You could probably copy much of the design from currently produced pistols if their production cost is not actually due to the materials or difficulty of manufacture. You would have to hang a few bells and whistles on it for product differentiation, but that's no big deal. Supply some product to someone who can do well on the competition circuit and your marketing is half done.

I would guess (this is just a guess of course - you will have to do the math yourself, obviously) that your initial investment for parts and tools would not be much over $20,000. If the European pistols are so wildly overpriced then you with your low overhead should have plenty of room to make a reasonable profit.

Good luck and let us know how it works out.

Roger

Nuckin' futz. You don't like it, don't buy it. You want a not-so-expensive entry level pistol, there are more than enough used guns around. Nobody's earning a fortune building target pistols nowadays, just look at the production numbers - you've got to be lucky to sell more than a few hundred pistols of any identical production run.

In europe (holland) a new Pardini SP costs about E1500
Thats not much more, or less, than Walther GSP, Morini, FWB and Tesro.
In the US all matchguns are overpriced cause they're import.

Tycho wrote:Nuckin' futz. You don't like it, don't buy it. You want a not-so-expensive entry level pistol, there are more than enough used guns around. Nobody's earning a fortune building target pistols nowadays, just look at the production numbers - you've got to be lucky to sell more than a few hundred pistols of any identical production run.

You've got a point. Also, while I don't know the firearms market trends too well, I like making uneducated guesses. Shooting has been a very popular sport in many parts of the world. The trend that I do know unlike the market trends is that the firearms laws are getting more and more strict. The discussion about pros and cons and reasonings of the laws belongs elsewhere, but I think the changing legal environment also changes the market. Fewer people get into the sport and shring the business, making production runs smaller, making the cost per unit higher etc. The mass production guns still have the advantage of scale, even at runs significant smaller than the peak capacity, but in the low volume business, the effect is immediate.

Still, I don't think the sudden jump in prices has been adequately explained. One reason I might think of is that the previous generations of match firearms was very long lived. As an example, the GSP did not evolve very much during its production life, I guess (haven't held one myself) that even the Expert is very much different. Some competitors dropped off. Then during the last decade, the designs changed much more. MG came to the market, Walther made the SSP etc, electronics started to appear etc.

Well, this would only explain the price differences between the old and new models. Not enough. Good guesses welcome.

But what happened to the ammo? The raw materials don't explain much. Have there been some drastic market disruptions? Historically, ammunition is not really that expensive even now, but the recent rise has been very steep. If I remember the past prices correctly, the relative change in 5-10 years is much bigger than in guns.

Mika

I started with a Ruger MkII, then a High Standard, now I shoot an SP. All were capable of shooting a good group slow fire but during timed and rapid fire shooting the SP far outperforms the others. The lower barrel configuration and recoil damping of the SP allowed much faster return to proper sight alignment.

If you factor in inflation and the value of the euro since 2000, a new pardini should cost about twice what they did back then.

If my research is correct, a feinwerkbau model 2 cost $1000 in 1988, that's about $2000 today.

A euro was $0.85 when I got my pardini, now it's $1.30 something. I'm hoping it'll go back down, I need some magazines!

Targetsport wrote:David I’m not going as far as 1980, I’m talking only 8 years ago these guns could be purchased for very affordable price. They all had 100% price increase.

OK, I will bite on this.

When I started shooting as a junior 18 years ago, I purchased a new Hammerli 280 .22 for $1830AUD. When I stoppd shooting in 1999 due to injury, the 280 had been replaced with the Hammerli SP20, which was around $2000AUD at the time.

I returned to the sport 4 years ago to buy a 2nd hand Hammerli 280 kit for $1800, and I reguarly see Hammerli 280s in .22 selling for $1500AUD 2nd hand today. So the price hasnt dropped much in the last 18 years for 2nd hand...

So when I looked at upgrading my old er 2nd hand Hammerli 280 and buying a brand new Hammerl SP20 2 years ago, the price was $3000 AUD.

With wuch a high price tag, I decided to play with the nasty MGs for a while. When I woke up to what malfuntioning rubbish I was using, I sold the MGs to buy Hammerli SP20s, for the reasonable price of $2150AUD for the .22 and $2250AUD for the .32

So looking back 18 years, paying $1830 for a new Hammerli 280 is not much different to buying a new Hammerli SP20 for $2150 in May this year.

Prices havent increased that much over the years, with the exception of exchange rate fluctuations seen in the last 7 or 8 years, where have the prices been turbulent, and that have settled back down now.

Now while I dont use Morini, Pardini, Steyr, Walther, elc... nor do I know their price history... I do know that prices today and substantially cheaper in Aus for new than they were 5 years ago!

cheers
Brad

yana wrote:In europe (holland) a new Pardini SP costs about E1500
Thats not much more, or less, than Walther GSP, Morini, FWB and Tesro.
In the US all matchguns are overpriced cause they're import.

Agreed.

Unforunately the inability to transfer between states places a damper.
You can't simply transfer from a dealer to states such as CA or MA. These guns are not APPROVED.

Used Guns carry a premium.

Several German shops show used GSP's for considerably less than their prices here.

I have heard of prices for the Pardini that point towards $2600 which is more than the currency conversion. There are too many middlemen in the US who offer no value to the shooter. We simply pay for them to urk out a living and do nothing. I am thinking of several distributors who are located within New England.

Pardini prices outside of NEW ENGLAND are much better than those here.

Bill

I hate to tell people that there's more costs to manufacturing than the costs of the individual parts.

So go out and rent or build a factory, oh yeah you'll need real estate agents and lawyers, hire engineers to design a pistol, design tooling,oh yes unless your independently wealth you'll need bankers to lend you money of which you'll need to service, so you'll need to hire accountants to handle your finances, you'll need some marketing people, and advertising budget, you'll need to source materials, you'll need to make some prototypes, you'll need to do some testing, you'll need insurance, the few employees you have probably will need some benefits, you'll need to find some one to manufacture the tooling for you, there's costs for electricity, water, and waste (we haven't even sold a pistol yet), you now start making pistols (22 target pistols), there's testing for cetifying the pistols, then we need to find a dealer network, then we need to ship them, we need a inventory of product and parts, we needed to staff a factory and pay wages and benefits, we need liability insurance for when the stupid do something stupid with our product and we get sued. I'm sure I've missed lots but this is just a brief overview of the things you don't see when you look at a product. So when you look at a product and figure there's less than $1000 worth of parts there you might be right but with out all that other stuff those $1000 worth of parts would have never been put together and delivered to you.

Oh yea I left out profit too, with out that you don't get investors or have funds to develop new stuff or new tooling or manufacturing methods.

Another issue in the manufacturing world of .22 target pistols is it's a very small niche market. And not a great niche market at that, the vast majority buy 1 pistol every 10-15 years. The number of potential customers is very small, so there's not the economies of scale to write of capital cost against.

mika wrote:The trend that I do know unlike the market trends is that the firearms laws are getting more and more strict. ...I think the changing legal environment also changes the market.

Excellent point, easily observed in the Class III world. (For non-U.S. readers, that means automatic weapons and such-like.) A Thompson submachine gun that costs USD$25K in the U.S. will sell, in various locations outside the U.S., for as little as USD$1500. Ridiculously heavy, obsolete-by-decades machine pistols shouldn't really cost more than that. It's only the artificial restriction on supply in the U.S. that has driven up prices.

I'm not sure what that has to do with this market segment, however. I know that the paperwork has gotten worse for firearms that cross national borders. It's become virtually impossible to find a U.S. Federal Firearms License holder (aka, gun dealer) who will take on the task of an "occasional import for personal use" for one of their customers. Like anything else, if target pistols can't move across borders simply and easily, their price becomes artificially inflated. I feel sure there are other legal problems that inflate the cost of all firearms. However, how much of this is a factor specifically in the rarefied world of high-end target arms is beyond my competence to address.

mika wrote:But what happened to the ammo? The raw materials don't explain much. Have there been some drastic market disruptions?

I know nothing authoritatively but I have been repeatedly told that U.S. ammo producers could generally use up all their manufacturing capacity simply to produce military ammo. Fighting a couple of wars, it seems the U.S. armed forces are buying as much as anyone is willing to produce. From the point of view of ammo manufacturers, anything produced for the civilian market is just a distraction. Because they don't really want to be bothered, they extract financial incentives before they'll divert manufacturing capacity and materials away from military contracts. I have no idea if that explanation holds water...but it is my impression that military ammo like 5.56NATO has risen in price by a far smaller percentage than purely civilian stuff like, say, .44-40.