I hardly ever touch my air rifles any more so I decided it was time to try to sell some. Rather than mess with online sales, packing, shipping, etc. I decided to drive seven hours to a little town near Hot Springs for the Arkansas Airgun Extravaganza. Let's just say the "extravaganza" name was optimistic at best.

There might have been 12 vendors total, including me. Two of the guys with tables weren't even selling anything, they were just showing. There was quite a bit of PCP stuff there, but I'm not familiar enough with that scene to know if these were current state-of-the-art rifles or yesterday's news. There were a couple dozen nice German springers (including the ones I brought). Most of the show was old American stuff: Crosman, Daisy, Benjamin and Sheridan. Seems like the more homely, worn out and boogered up the gun was, the more people were interested.

I unloaded all my old Crosmans and took a beating on them. I also sold a well worn Walther spring match rifle. I sold it too cheap but I was happy to sell something.

Mostly, the event was a gathering of nerds who share the same fascination with "old BB guns." By my observation, vendors traveled from Oklahoma, Texas, Missouri and Iowa. There were very few walk-in customers, but some of those traveled great distances, too. The guy I sold my Walther to came from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was all just a big small social club for airgun nerds. THey all knew each other from past shows and online forums. We all went for pizza together Friday evening. The guys there said this was the smallest Arkansas show they remembered. Supposedly, in years past they overflowed into a second room. This year, the small main room was less than half full.

No point to this thread really. Just sharing. I gather there are better airgun shows (Ohio, Texas, New York). I hope they're better anyway.

That’s where you lost me for sure.  Unless it was a good experience but 7 hours is a lot of billable time.  A lot of prime weekend time.  

At this point I am keeping all my unused air gun stuff.  No easy way to sell, ship and the money will be trivial.

Yep. I knew it was stupid when i did it.

Oh well, i’ve had worse weekends.

Sounds like you had a fun mini road trip.

I have a Benjamin Nitro .22 pellet gun that I shoot rats, skunks and coons with when I trap them out in my chicken run.  I think I paid $90 for it 11 years ago.  It's the perfect tool for a city dweller that can't shoot a real gun in his backyard.

Years ago, there was an annual airgun show not far from your old stomping grounds, south of St. Louis, around Arnold. It was a really good show.