$200 Cash, No Paperwork | SCP-127
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Why does a gun collector value old firearms that still work?
I'm not a big gun guy. Not in the way you're picturing it at least. I don't have any aggro stickers on my truck. I don't have any tactical gear or have stockpiles of ammo sitting in a closet, waiting for their moment to shine. I'm just some guy. I have a mortgage, I have a white-collar job, I also have 11 guns. All of them are old, and all of them still work. That's the whole thing for me, honestly. The still working part. Anybody can hang a rusted out relic on a wall. I've got a Russian rifle from World War II. It was built in a country fighting for its survival by somebody who didn't get to be picky. You can see the tool marks. It still puts five shots inside a coffee mug at a hundred yards. That's craftsmanship.
I've got this rare revolver the Navy bought during the war. There's a ring on the bottom of the grip where a cord would loop through so you could fasten it to your belt. It's shiny on one side and dull on the other, because it dangled against a man's hip for years. There's a story there. I like that. I've got a Japanese rifle I really like. On the top of it, there's supposed to be a chrysanthemum. The Emperor's mark. On mine, it's been ground off. They did that at the surrender. Somebody sat down with the file and took the emperor off a rifle so the Americans could have it. That's interesting to me. You can still see the faint ghost of it if you get the light bright. Sixteen petals. I've had that rifle nine years, and I still turn it under the lamp sometimes to find them.
This kind of stuff is what I like about guns. This is why I'd consider myself a quote unquote gun guy, even though I'm not really a gun guy. I shoot everything I own, which is the part some collectors think is strange. Some of these guys will pay four grand for something, then keep it in a foam-lined case and never once fire it. It's not a coin or a Pokemon card. It's a tool. A machine built to do a thing. And the fact that it can still do the thing is a marvel. I like to celebrate that. I want to feel what has the power to change history in my hands. I get it. I know how that sounds. I said it out loud to a girl I was saying one time, and she got real quiet real fast. The job and the money help. I manage software rollouts for hospital pharmacies.
It isn't interesting, and there's no way to make it interesting. But it pays $175,000 a year plus two bonuses. I live alone in a nice new build in the suburbs with a finished basement. In the basement are a pegboard, a couple workbenches, a safe, and a dehumidifier that runs all summer. So that's me. I want to be fair to myself here. I wanted on the record that on the Saturday morning in question, I was just doing my usual thing. Nothing weird. I was a guy with a hobby and a stamp on my hand.
What does the collector discover at the monthly gun show?
The monthly gun show is at the Shriner's Hall a few miles off the Turnpike. It's always on a Saturday. I get there twenty minutes after the doors open. The good stuff moves in the first hour, and everybody knows it. Parking is free, but it's 12 bucks to get in. The woman at the table stamps my hand with something that comes out a blue amorphous blob. It's cold inside, and it smells like loose change, kettle corn, and cigarettes. Everything with a trigger has a zip tie through it. There's a guy selling beef jerky. Another guy is selling freeze dried lasagna in a bucket rated for twenty five years, which is a long time to be confident about lasagna. I do a lap. In the middle of the floor there's a kid, maybe twenty-five, working a table for what I assume is his dad.
He's got a Luger out on Velvet, and I stop because it's a nice one. He tells me it's a 1916.
Why does Roy invite him to see a gun he cannot display?
I tell him the numbers stamped on the top don't match the numbers on the frame, which means somebody built that gun out of two other guns. Either he doesn't know that, or his dad's counting on me not knowing. He says that's how they come. It's not. I let it go. Then, back near the far wall, there's a table I get six feet from and turn around. It's World War II German stuff, which is fine I guess. Half the room is German stuff. But there's a difference between a dagger under glass with a card explaining who made it and an armband proudly displayed on a stand.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why does a gun collector value old firearms that still work?
0:06–3:08
2
What does the collector discover at the monthly gun show?
3:08–4:04
3
Why does Roy invite him to see a gun he cannot display?
4:04–6:58
4
Why does Roy sell an unregistered MP5K for $200 cash?
6:58–10:00
5
Why is the MP5K warm, and why won't its magazine come out?
10:00–12:47
6
What happens when he switches SCP-127 to full automatic?
12:47–16:02
7
Why does the gun reload itself while making a painful groan?
16:02–19:20
8
What happens when SCP-127's living ammunition wounds an intruder?
19:20–24:53