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When my wife and I were looking to buy we found the SAXD9 was $85 cheaper (cash price) at the Reliant Gun Show than at Academy. If we had wanted to pay with a credit card there would be a 3% markup. One of the earlier posters mentioned that one of the reasons to buy at a gun show is that you can pay cash and not pay sales tax. That is only true for a private sale. If you buy from a dealer at a gun show you are going to pay sales tax. At least that has been my experience.

Bottom line, if you never ask, the answer is always "no."

Edited original post!!!

Know what you want.

Know what you are willing to pay.

Shop around.

Take cash.

Stick to those and you will be okay.

I go for the private sales, scored a lot of good deals. Try to go early the first morning though or late on the last day.

Its the seller's 'job' to get as much as he can. It's the buyers 'job' to get it for as little as he can. Go to the same guy with the roles reversed and he will be working you the other way. Cars, guns, houses, horses, bankers, after all these years - paying dearly for my education, it seems to me to work pretty much the same everywhere - regardless of what's being negotiated. On a few rare occasions I have been in the company of people who could buy anything they wanted, for cash, up to and including small countries. They never, ever, paid the asking price, they delighted in the game and would walk away a hundred times before they settled.

My wife is the horse trader in my family, she gets it from her Dad who was literally a horse trader. She has asked for, demanded, prices and concessions that turned me red. Nothing rude, just "this is all I am going to pay". Sometimes the other party would say yes, sometimes they said no, but she had reset their level of expectation and we almost always got a much better deal than we would have otherwise.

I'm still learning from her, but if you think of it as a contest, a game, with your role being to get the best price you can, with no apologies due anyone, it can almost be fun.