Buy once, buy right?

[Balders]

Hi folks,

When I decide to take the plunge and buy a target pistol, I just wondered what people thoughts were on the old addage buy once, buy right?

So my choices are...spend upwards on £1200 on something like an LP10/FWB P44/Morini etc and know that I'll not have to buy another pistol (ever!) or do I go for something shall we say a little less at the top of the market, still in the several hundreds category I guess, and possibly sell it (it looks like they hold value pretty well) and upgrade when my shooting has matured?

I guess the best compromise would be find a second hand top of the range, but they don't exactly seem to come up often. I am not in any great rush though, so waiting for the right 2nd hander to come along is definately an option.

Just curious as to whether people have made a large investment straight off the bat and regretted it, or if it turned out to be the best thing they could have done?

[zooma]

When I returned to target shooting with an air pistol after a break of well over 35 years I fondly remembered shooting with my Feinwerkbau Model 65 and (with a few exceptions) that was the weapon of choice for just about everyone "back in the day" so I bought a new Feinwerkbau P44 thinking that would be the only pistol I would ever need to buy.

However, it did not work out that way as although my brand loyalty to Feinwerkbau remains strong I soon realised that not many of the fellow pistol shooters that I met at the various clubs liked the high sightline of the P44 and after shooting various other air pistols I bought a Steyr LP10 and enjoyed the lower sightline better and even though the P44 is a magnificent air pistol I ended up selling it as I got on better with the LP10 and a Morini that I was able to pick up in "mint" condition at a good price a few months later.

Several years and match air pistols later I have realised that at my age being a good shot was not likely to happen for me the second time around but I still very much enjoyed target shooting with different types of air pistol, and having a change now and again all added to my enjoyment ( but not to my ability to shoot any better!).

Buying a good condition used match pistol is a wise move as it should save you some cash and can in many cases be sold again at a later date with little (and sometimes) no loss so if you change your mind or just fancy a change in the future the financial impact is not so great.

This will not be the case if you buy a new match air pistol as target weapons do not hold their value as well as some of the sporting air rifles ( for example) simply because there are a lot less buyers for them as target shooting is still a minority sport when compared with field shooting and just plain old plinking that many thousands of people enjoy every day.

My advice would be to shoot all of the pistols that you think you would like before parting with any cash so the one you do buy is the type that you have already decided you get on with the best, and if you buy a good used match pistol and change your mind at a later date the cost implications will not be so bad...but the temptation to buy a brand new match air pistol can be very strong and sometimes impossible to resist if the bank balance permits:

[Balders]

I've certainly noticed that whilst rifles seem to come up very regularly, pistols are few and far between at the "upper" end of the market.

Time, however is on my side and I'm not in a rush, even though budget at the moment does exist to buy new. I've probably only ever bought a couple of new (reasonably expensive) things in my life, always looking to save a few quid, but from the prices I've seen on a handful of adverts around, there is not that huge a gap to buying brand new, and obviously that implies warranty/cyclinder dates etc.