So after picking up a handful of collectable ammo & boxes of ammo over the last few months I just thought I would mention a few things I have been burned on. Firstly, I dont know if there was an intent on the various sellers to put one over on someone unsuspecting, but here they are.
Many of these boxes were wrapped in plastic, or layers of saran wrap and scotch tape, which helped hide a few issues.
One: a label on a WW1 era two part box, which looked unopened. I bought it for that reason at a price 7 times what it was really worth, only to peel off the layers of plastic to find the label was infact cut (half-assedly) across, and the box had been opened. This was my mistake, I should have asked the seller specifically if the box had been opened or not. As it is, expensive lesson learned in paying 100$ for a 15$ box of ammo. If you are buying for the box, rather than contents ask more questions I guess. In this particular case the gunshow was 300km away, so by the time I found out its not like you can go back.
Two: box looked fine, a little rough, but fine, only to find on getting it out of the plastic, that someone had glued part of the box back together. Again, under all the plastic I couldnt see that.
Three: F-ing sticker residue etc. I picked up several boxes where under a few layers of plastic everything looked ok-ish. On opening, various patches of gummy/dirty residue became apparent. So a fairly pristine box becomes VG rather than Ex. Mind you, I also picked up a few where helpful sellers plastered stupid stickers on the actual box, which when you try to remove them, they pull off the outer layer of the box. Just a friendly hint, if you see a sticker on a box, assume and treat it as permanent damage, 99% of the time it is. Frankly the homemade labels etc are infuriating to me, as I have seen a few vendors put their helpful stickers on the actual box, then wrap it in plastic, rather than between the layers of plastic... ugh.
In a few cases I actually bought the boxes for the actual contents, so will swallow the costs of boxes that are now basically garbage in my mind, but it goes to remind you that the layers of plastic etc can hide alot, just saying.
Many of these boxes were wrapped in plastic, or layers of saran wrap and scotch tape, which helped hide a few issues.
One: a label on a WW1 era two part box, which looked unopened. I bought it for that reason at a price 7 times what it was really worth, only to peel off the layers of plastic to find the label was infact cut (half-assedly) across, and the box had been opened. This was my mistake, I should have asked the seller specifically if the box had been opened or not. As it is, expensive lesson learned in paying 100$ for a 15$ box of ammo. If you are buying for the box, rather than contents ask more questions I guess. In this particular case the gunshow was 300km away, so by the time I found out its not like you can go back.
Two: box looked fine, a little rough, but fine, only to find on getting it out of the plastic, that someone had glued part of the box back together. Again, under all the plastic I couldnt see that.
Three: F-ing sticker residue etc. I picked up several boxes where under a few layers of plastic everything looked ok-ish. On opening, various patches of gummy/dirty residue became apparent. So a fairly pristine box becomes VG rather than Ex. Mind you, I also picked up a few where helpful sellers plastered stupid stickers on the actual box, which when you try to remove them, they pull off the outer layer of the box. Just a friendly hint, if you see a sticker on a box, assume and treat it as permanent damage, 99% of the time it is. Frankly the homemade labels etc are infuriating to me, as I have seen a few vendors put their helpful stickers on the actual box, then wrap it in plastic, rather than between the layers of plastic... ugh.
In a few cases I actually bought the boxes for the actual contents, so will swallow the costs of boxes that are now basically garbage in my mind, but it goes to remind you that the layers of plastic etc can hide alot, just saying.
