On
's post about the CMP receiving 1911's:
The buzz surrounding the World War II-era 1911s destined to be released to the public through the Civilian Marksmanship Program is amazing.
CMP is ready to sell thousands of surplus pistols, assuming President Trump signs the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which Congress recently passed.
It’s one of the hottest events the gun community has ever seen.
CMP is feeling the heat too.
Cooper is the general manager of CMP North as well as their marketing manager.
He said 1911-hungry collectors need to “pump the brakes” a bit.
“It’s still being held up in political channels now, and we haven’t decided the specific method to distribute them, other than the general idea that there are approximately 100,000 pistols, and we’ll parcel out 10,000 annually.
Pricing, Cooper said, is expected to be between $800-$1,000 for shooters.
“It’s hard to say exactly, but a good guess will be around $1,000 minimum,” he said. “One reason for this is that the 1911 is a very valuable pistol. Even though they may be shot out or busted up, we don’t want them falling into the hands of people who will just leave them in a glove box. We want a perceived value — more of an heirloom. We don’t want them considered a standard sidearm. All we need is to have someone commit a liquor store robbery with one and then we’ll be held accountable.
“Their values might be a little bit less, but we want some sort of threshold to prevent anyone from coming in off the street and plunking down $400. I would guess they’d sell for $800 to $1,000 but they’ll go by grade like our M-1s — service grade to collector grade. The rarer ones — ones with all matching numbers or ones carried by celebrities or heroes with provenance, will go to our auction house.”
We shall continue to update this story until the pistols are shipping.
