word got back to savage that people were buying them and then flipping them for profit...................just a guess...........lol
Actually, I don’t think that’s the case. Savage pulled the rifles from the US market because retailers were selling them to everyone, regardless of LE/MIL status. Canada got the leftovers, which numbered 1,500 IIRC. The fact that this rifle was indeed discontinued for sale in the US can still be seen on many American forums.
The promo went on for the better part of a year here in Canada, and the retailers were pretty strict about who they sold the rifle to, and it seemed that they did sell out of all of them for a while. I’m not sure where this extra 150-180 rifles came from, but when Frontier and SFRC state that they are limited, I’m willing to bet that they are. Who knows if Savage will develop a new rifle with similar specs and similar price points, but for $599-649, either way you look at it, it’s a pretty smoking deal for what you get.
They indeed pop up on EE and occasionally some sellers had quite a markup, but the majority of folks just wanted to recover their shipping, taxes (works out to about $700) and time (time spent ordering, picking up at the post office, taking pictures, posting, responding to PMs and e-mails, packing the rifle up again, taking it to the post office, shipping it etc). The guys that were asking $1,100 for it, well, hey, if someone is willing to pay, power to them. The guys asking for $700ish, I don’t have a problem with that at all as they weren’t exactly profiting from it.