So I have finally gotten off my rear and started to crunch numbers for the entirety of 2015 Gunbroker sales. The results for the Albys are interesting to say the least.
In 2015, the average Albanian cost you ~$560, provided that you could even find them as a total of 33 were sold from March through December. Extrapolating out, this would have put us at around 3.3 per month or ~40 carbines for an entire calendar year changing hands via Gunbroker. Certainly not a huge pool of sellers out there looking to move their Albys for sure. Not surprisingly, the 'rare' years of low production have far fewer guns showing up with only 1 example popping up from years '67, '76, & '77 and a big fat 0 from 1979. There is a clear drop off of around $150 between an avg. 'as-issued' gun and a one that is clearly refurbished. I didn't expect to see such a large price differential, but there you go; buyers are most certainly looking for originality and it appears they will pay $150 more for it.
What's more interesting is that now I can chart the entirety of 2015 based on per month sales. With the Albys, there is a clear upward trend from start to finish with a bit of a mid-year peak in July that was quickly surpassed in November (we'd call that a bull run if this was the stock market). According to the slope of the trendline, from start to finish through the year, Albys gained an avg. of ~$17 per month. This is a pretty good price appreciation and corresponds to an increase in value of a typical gun of of an amazing 37% from March to December, ending up at a calculated avg. price of $630 in December (December avg. was really $600 as there was only a single gun sold). Admittedly, my linear trendline fit is not great and additional data would most certainly flatten out the curve a bit, but it was interesting to see that the perceived price rise in Albys is a real phenomenon and not just a figment of my imagination.