May Auction Preview, Estate Consignments & Rifle Bullet Drop Explained

Estimated reading time: 4 min

May 30 Auction: Nearly 800 Lots on the Block

[00:56]

The May sale is essentially locked in, sitting at around 780 lots with the catalog still not quite closed. The crew acknowledged that number is creeping toward 800, which would be an extraordinary volume for a single event. The conversation turned to how to handle the overflow: a smaller July sale of 400 to 500 lots is being floated as a pressure-relief valve, and September is already filling up with four large collections either scheduled for pickup or on their way in.

If you have been sitting on a collection and waiting to see how the calendar shakes out, the window is closing faster than most people expect. September lots are booking now, and December is the next realistic opening after that. Anyone who does not move before summer could be looking at 2027. The May 30 auction runs at Gunslinger Auctions in Orange, with doors opening at 9am for registration, the hammer dropping at 10am PT, and the sale expected to wrap around 5pm. Online bidding is scheduled to go live approximately 30 days out, so watch the catalog at HiBid or Proxibid starting around April 30.

Estate Consignments and Why the Auction Model Pays Off

[02:02]

Six collection meetings are lined up for the following week, and one call stands out. A 90-year-old woman reached out after her husband, a significant collector, passed away some years back. She has not touched the guns since. Those are the calls that carry weight, and the crew did not pretend otherwise. The firearms sit there as reminders of someone who is gone, and the right move is turning them into capital that actually does something for the family still here.

A recent job drove that point home. A widow came to Gunslinger Auctions with a collection and made a direct purchase offer. The offer was fair and the crew took it seriously, but pushed back with a suggestion: let the auction work first. She had asked for $10,000. The auction returned just over $30,000. The transparency of competitive bidding is exactly what protects sellers in that position. Nobody is negotiating against themselves, and there is no dealer markup to absorb. The market sets the number, and in this case the market was three times what the seller expected.

The business has been running nearly 29 years, and that track record shapes how the crew thinks about every estate call. If you have firearms from a family collection and are trying to figure out the right path, consigning through Gunslinger Auctions puts the full force of competitive bidding behind every lot.

The Azusa Store: Bulk .22, Davidson’s Orders, and More

[05:54]

Twelve cases of .22 LR were just sent up to the Azusa store, and a sale is running on bulk .22 if you need to stock up. The store is not just a modern firearms counter. Cowboy shooters, military surplus collectors, and buyers looking for something specific all have reason to stop in. If a firearm is not on the shelf, the store can order through Davidson’s via their Gun Genie program, which covers a wide range of makes and models delivered direct to the store.

The crew also touched on ammo policy at auctions. Ammunition is generally not put up as standalone auction lots unless it is historically tied to a specific firearm, such as original Henry cartridges from the 1800s. Bulk ammo that comes in with a collection typically gets purchased outright rather than run through the sale, keeping the floor clean and the focus on the firearms themselves.

Caller Question: When Do You Start Correcting for Bullet Drop?

[07:46]

A caller named Richard asked when a rifle shooter has to start accounting for elevation, meaning compensating for bullet drop. The answer depends entirely on two things: the caliber and the projectile design. A big, heavy, round-nosed bullet like a .45-70 Government loses velocity quickly and starts curving toward the ground at relatively modest ranges. One of the hosts compared it to lobbing a bowling ball. A heavy, slow-moving projectile in a flat-nosed or round-nose configuration is fighting the same physics as a bow and arrow: you have to arc the shot to get it where you want it.

At the other end of the spectrum, a high-velocity round with a sleek spitzer bullet profile, such as a .300 Winchester Magnum or a 6.5 Creedmoor, holds a flat trajectory for several hundred yards before drop becomes a meaningful problem. The general rule of thumb offered was to zero at 100 yards for most applications, or 200 yards for a high-efficiency, ballistically capable caliber, and then start applying compensation beyond that point. Beyond the zero distance, a shooter needs either a ballistic chart for that specific load or enough time behind the rifle to know the drop values by feel.