Which GB tracking threads should I keep doing in 2017?

[running-man]

Results will be shown at the end of the poll on the 27th. I just can't keep up with the demands of looking through 200 bubba'd guns every month.  It's gotten better from a total guns standpoint, but much much worse from a percentage of bubbas in the total population.

Any ideas, helpful hints, or other discussion etc. is appreciated.  Additionally, if anyone  might want to take on any particular group, I'd be all ears. 

[firstchoice]

That's a tough choice to make.

The Albanian SKS because of it's low numbers available, and a few oddball characteristics. I don't see it losing any value on the collectors market. Also, you don't have to wade through loads of bubba'd Albys'! 

The Romanian SKS because of it's low numbers available, and even fewer with all-matching #'s. Unfortunately, many were bubba'd. But those are still worth bringing back to as-issued configuration even if it's non-matching, because most Romy's are non-matching.

How to make a third and final choice with all the rest still on the table?  I don't own any of the "Trinity" rifles, so I don't track them as much. I can't imagine having to look through all those "horsetrash" listings every month. Some with one picture. Many with only four pics. Some with fifty out of focus and repetitive pics, but none of the areas that collectors want to see. And, the "descriptions".   

I'm still learning about all of them, and looking at all of them. There's still so much to learn about the Chinese SKS, but I can imagine the time it consumes having to scroll through all of those, and all the Yugoslavian SKS.   

My third choice was the Chinese Commercial, but I have other interests, as well. Just plain hard to narrow it down to only three! 

firstchoice

[Power Surge]

Man, this is hard to say.

I obviously have no clue how much work is involved in doing this. But here's my thoughts...

Alby, Rommy, and Trinity, seem like such a low number that I am not sure how much they really add to the workload.

Usually when a Trinity gun comes up for sale, we already know about it since it's made known in the auction section. so really, by the time the report comes out, most of us have already analyzed those guns. So I don't really see the need for the Trinity report other than tracking. And in that case, does 2 or 3 guns a month really affect anything?

Albys and Rommys are along those same lines, just in a greater number. But they still are such a lower number compared to all the other ones. I'm not big on those guns, so is there really a big different in production variances between the few years of Alby and Rommy that it's that important to track?

Now, the brunt of RMs workload has to be Chinese, Russian, Yugo, and Chinese Commercial. Here's my take on those.

I know that Yugos were the second longest produced SKS. And there are very few differences between the M59/66 guns that span decades. The M59 is kind of special, but not many out there so it shouldn't be a big deal. The sites are always flooded with Yugos. The ratio of how many Yugos there are vs the need to track "differences" in them just doesn't seem needed. I would say if one section has to get the axe, it would be Yugos. Either kill it off, or simplify it into just basic sales numbers without having to analyze each gun.

Russians are abundant as well, but I feel that we need to keep doing Russians because we are still learning about them.

Military Chinese most likely make up the largest number of the workload, but it's also the most popular SKS that people have. An even though we've "figured out" the Chinese guns extremely well, we still find oddities and new things from the online listings.

Commercial Chinese.... well I know that these are not everybody's cup of tea, but aside from the Trinity guns, these are currently the most collectible and in demand SKS out there. And there are so many different models and variations of models, that we are still learning about them all. To me, this is the most important category to keep. Not because I personally like the Commercial guns, but because the Commercial guns are still the undiscovered country of the SKS world. The ONLY new information we get on them, comes from the online auctions.

So that's my 2.5 cents. If there HAS to be only 3, then it's Russian, Chinese, Chinese Commercial.

[Greasemonkey]

My cent and a half adjusted for inflation...

On Yugos.. M59s or special variations on M59/66s, like them chrome things.. That drops the Yugoslavian numbers way down and besides you can get M59/66 in the retail market, it ain't like Tom Dick or Harry cant find one.

Russians..ehh..... its what ever.  I got mine, thats enough

Kind of like PS said on those holier than thou uber death priced trinity things...if one pops up, 9 times outta 10 some GunBroker voyeuristic like type person will make the classic Goonies "Hey you guys" announcement.

Romanian and Albanian, these should remain.... See the bottom paragraph.

Chinese.. Geeze, I'd say classic "only" style and commercial.. If bubba put his paws on it, file 13 it. Refinished/fluff and buffed/chopped/useless donkey shlong magazines/cheese grater/origami tupperware stocks skew the pricing of the actual classic weapons.

Now, purpose built commercial Chinese, as imported again with no help from our friend, bubba. I can see the niche' and it should be scratched. Some are interesting and just as rare as the some of the military variants.

Ok... That was 2 and a 1/4 cents... Whoops

I will add to my closing arguement.... I could, ok since no one else wants to step up  .....I can/will try to do the Albanian and Romanian, the ugly unwanted Combloc bastard step children, so they will remain. I know it aint much help, but it is something. Now remember.... GM no longer has a GB account, and me and Excel do not see eye to eye. So...if I screw it up, it's ok, I'm used to it and everyone can get over their self. 

RM, PM GM  a set of directions of when, what, where, and how, and we can go from there.

[Justin Hell]

Personally, I enjoy them all...and haven't voted yet for that reason.

I learn from them, and will go on binges every couple months before the auction links dry up...you can choose your own adventure or sitting time by which nation you choose.

If you were to shave off all that is Bubba, and put that into a sub category handled by someone else, how much would that lighten the load?  Mentally it might help to not look so closely at the carnage. Your threads would be for the oohs and ahhhs, the other caretaker(giver)'s would be for the eews and AAARGHs?

[running-man]

Appreciate all the feedback guys.  Let me respond to some of the comments and help clarify what I mean when I talk about "not being able to keep up with the demands" (sorry for the extra long post, just trying to get everything down.)

At the end of the month, I logon to gunbroker and pull up a saved search I have for all SKSs over the last 30 days.  I then organize that search by number of bids from highest to lowest.  This typically gives me on the order of 400 to 600 auctions which I immediately take a snapshot of by cutting and pasting the GB information I'm given: Item, Title, Quantity, Bids, Price, Time Left.

I copy and paste that information into a word document and then run a little macro I have to clean up the data.  If the quantity is 1, I delete that field.  When the quantity is more than 1 (a two for one auction), that really throws a monkey wrench into the works and I have to hand edit things to see WTF happened.

Time left is not useful of course because all the auctions have ended, so I nuke that field as well.  The title field is the biggest pain in the rear because for some reason, GB likes to export linefeeds for some long descriptions and others it is happily content to leave as a single line.  I often have to go in and hand edit these multiple linefeeds into a single line so I can move on to the next step.

When the data is all clean, I go into Excel and import the data into a spreadsheet.  This usually works well, though when I miss a field, things can get ugly and I have to go back to the Word document to fix my mistake.  Anyhow, by the time I get the entire 400-600 gun set into Excel, I've already spend the better part of an hour getting the list.  I don't really see any good way to shorten this as I'm working with what GB outputs and am being meticulous (perhaps overly-meticulous) with the data.

Now the hard work begins, I copy the entire spreadsheet to my master 2016 (soon to be 2017) list for all the GB reports.  I have separate pages for Albys, Romys, etc. but initially until I can ID the gun, the list goes onto a temporary sheet where I can recreate the GunBroker URL from the item number (because all GB gives me is an item number, fortunately the link is quite easy to generate and has been consistent for 2 years now)

On the temp sheet I organize all the guns by price.  Uber high dollar guns ($1000+) get scrutinized to see if they meet "Special" status.  Anything under $200 is typically culled because SKSs never sell for under a Benjamin and typically don't for 2 either.  This also gets rid of the barreled receivers (which I pull S/Ns off of if they are uncommon arsenals) and any accessory like a magazine or whatnot that may have gotten through the gunbroker filter I used.  At this point I've got another 30 min to an hour (let's call it 2 hours total) invested in the worksheet and I still haven't ID'd a single firearm yet.

I next sort by description  Anything marked "Albanian" gets manually cut and pasted to the "Albanian" sheet, "Russian, Soviet, USSR etc" all go to the Russian sheet and so on.  All the guns with crappy titles that don't ID the nationality go into the Chinese section because 8 times out of 10, that's what they will be.  So now I've got a boat load of items in their respective nationalities.  I've spent probably another 30 mins to an hour getting to this point with the bulk of the time spent on the damn Yugos and Chinese because they are so prevalent.  Let's call it 3 hours and I still haven't ID'd a single gun yet.

Next is actually going to the GB links and seeing what they are selling.  The guns are still sorted by title, and most GB sellers are lazy.  If a gun has a reserve and doesn't sell because the bids aren't high enough, they will simply relist using the exact same title, only the new listing will have a different item number.  In this way it's easy to cull out some of the crap, if "Pre Ban Norinco SKS 7.62x39 Type 56 Spike Bayonet BAKELITE HAND GUARD MILLED MATCHING AUTO RIFLE NR" didn't sell for $550 the first go around, it sure as hell didn't sell for $450 the second time, or perhaps even for $545 the third time.  But I'll be darned if I don't just click on auction #3 to make 100% certain I don't miss a gun.   


Anyhow, going through the links is what takes the lion's share of the time.  Albys, Specials, and Romys take maybe 5 minutes a gun, but there are only 2 or 3 auctions a month for each.  Call it 30 minutes for these three sections.  They are relatively easy to do and don't get tedious at all.  I'm happy to turn them over to you GM if you want them.  30 minutes is 30 minutes! 

Russians can take up to 5 minutes a gun too, but there are 30-70 listings to go through.   I'd say I spend 3 hours on Russians looking at them, cataloguing them, saving the photos of the ones worth saving, and perhaps immediately commenting on the oddballs or interesting ones I come across while they are still fresh in my mind.

Next up is Yugos and I do detest having to do Yugos.  I try and find the M59s first, but it's impossible to find them just by the description.  I speed through them at maybe 1-2 minutes a gun.  Tracking the damn S/N prefix means that I have to actually see the receiver S/N, so that slows things down a bit.  Tracking whether they are all matching vs force matched takes extra time as well as I've got to go through 6 different sets of S/Ns where they are available.  Doing this does mean that I catch all the G10s, all the non prefixed 50k guns, and all the honor guard guns that have enough info in the photos or auction description to be caught.  I also find a smattering of other nationality guns that someone has mistaken for a Yugo and it has been copied to the wrong spreadsheet.  3 hours for Yugos is probably what I spend.

Last up is Chinese.  All the Chinese, even the commercials get lumped together at first.  It's impossible to know what gun might be a bubba and what gun might be new in the box.  The descriptions might be accurate, but for the most part, people simply lie or are ignorant of what they are selling.  There are also a great many guns that get listed once or maybe twice, don't hit the reserve, and the seller gives up and decides to just keep it (Those are a complete waste of time for me).  I have to go through the descriptions and the auction links to determine what's what and this typically averages 2 to 5 minutes per gun (1 minute for bubbas).  I can't tell you how many times I've seen "Sporter" in the title expecting to find an AK mag Commercial Sporter only to find a beat-to-hell B-West import standard SKS.  Sometimes I click on a generic title such as "SKS in 7.62mm" and lo and behold, it's a beautiful Russian that sold for $300!  So I have to pull it from the Chinese section and populate it into the Russian section complete with the correct information.  Getting the Chinese (80 to 150 guns) and commercial Chinese (20 to 50 guns) section done typically takes me about 6 hours.  Much of the time is spent trying to ID the arsenal, arsenal condition, and current condition (this may be a total waste of time), or trying to ID the commercial model which as we all know isn't one of my strongpoints.

So there you go, I'd say I spend on the order of 12 to 14 hours during the month on all the GB posts.  It's not all one big block of time mind you, I typically work on it a half hour at lunch, another 20 minutes before I go to bed, a couple hours on a Sunday night etc. to get through it all. 

Culling the bubbas won't save a boatload of time, by the time I've determined it's a bubba, I've already spent my minute or so on the gun.  I think what probably takes the time is determining the arsenal, the arsenal condition and the current condition.  I'm so anal about these things that it really gums up the works when maybe I should just be zooming through them.

Anyhow, maybe to salvage all the GB listings I simply need to throttle down on what info is kept.  The block letter fields for Yugos is totally worthless I think.  I had thought to differentiate the B block M59s from the C block, but the collecting world just lumps them together price-wise anyhow.

The arsenal, current condition, and arsenal condition for Chinese might not be totally useful too.  I guess I don't know how useful these GB lists would be w/o that information in there...I'll have to think that one through.

[Greasemonkey]

Geeze, I had a brain spasm reading that, like an ice cream headache ... I will do what I can, so don't yell at me Maybe one day I will grow up and be able to try the Yugo section.

But... 12-14 hours of looking at SKSs.. how much time is spent drooling here and there? You know someone has that thought bopping around in their head, figured I'd ask.

[Justin Hell]

Now I see why horsetrash is used on listings that I sometimes don't think are all that bad...I am beginning to think the term horsetrash covers the whole gamut of curse words...and can be invoked for several reasons.

What would be neat would be for the data to spill into a live database, that a willing few initiates would have access to, and sort them at leisure...whittling away at the list as it occurs. Full indoctrination would be to read that whole post five times...and pass a quiz.

20-30 guns a day should be pretty easy to handle with 4-5 folks helping. Heck, it could bring discussion to those days that can string on without any action around here.  It would also reduce boredom by being forced to stick to one variety.

[Phosphorus32]

At the end of the month......................

Yikes!!!     

"Run a little macro"? I guess that's short for macrophage...they are little, albeit fairly large by blood cell standards. I know I have a bunch in my body but I've never written to one or even said hello...let  alone trained one for a running race. They just don't stick around that long anyhow. Perhaps I'm not the right guy for this job   

[Greasemonkey]

Maybe we should ask, what all info is beneficial, who needs or wants what info, what's needed and what's not?

Are factory numbers on Chinese needed, or does anyone care if it's a "B" or a "C" Yugo?

I don't see a /26\ vs a /0203\ stamp driving price or influencing the market. Does it matter if a Type 84 was a /26\ or a /223\, not really cause it's now a Type 84. Now specific serial ranges, I.C., bringbacks, maybe 6mil,  etc can at times drive the dollars. This is the important stuff I think.

Same with the Yugoslavian, an "H" prefix won't sell for much more or less than a "P" prefix, both are M59/66 rifles..

About the only ones who would pay attention to factory's or serial prefixes is the one who is after the complete set or after a particular thing. And by auctions/months end, if they were dedicated enough, they found their prize.

I think overall condition on Yugoslavians and Chinese carries more weight in final cost than the above.

Now on rifles like Russians, simplify it, light or heavy refurb, nope.. it is a refurbished rifle, which it is, plain and simple, even if all they did was dot the I in Russian and hit it with the diver down stamp, it's a refurb, it even has the stamp to prove it. If it is as issued, great, it is what it is, as issued.. Using 10 different discriptor terms ain't gonna make it sound better or worse, two are all that's needed, refurb or as issued. All the other Russian or any other nations weapons are either refurb or as issued, why should the Russian SKS any different, and as a side note: no one gives 2 squats about Yugoslavians or Romanians being heavy or light refurbs, both are usually discribed as simply refurbed or not.

If the Russian is a letter series, note it. Same if it's got '49 features or other goofy quirk.

I can see RM's point, having done spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations and other office crap, the more fat you trim while maintaining the important information everyone wants or needs, the leaner and faster it becomes.

Question's, opinions, comments, anything is welcomed, don't sit there just blinking at the screen, scratching yourself, offer up your opinion, regardless of how far out it may sound, especially if your one who wants or would like to keep this project alive. Please, que up the ASPCA Sarah McLachlan music here..... just think for a moment, about little RM slaving, typing, cutting and pasting, figuring and taking abuse from his wife, every month, working those fingers to the bone... Please, won't you give your opinion

[running-man]

Definitely a good question to ask GM.  What data is important to track?

Here's what I've got for the various flavors.  Items in pink are autopopulated via Gunbroker.  Items in green are what I think is important to keep.  Items in orange I'm open to hear whether they actually provide any value.
As a reminder Arsenal condition is as-issued/as-imported, vs refurb (heavy light for Russians), vs bubbadness.  Current condition is from Perfect (never seen a perfect gun) to Poor.

Albanian: Month, Item Number, Item Link, Description, # Bids, Final Price, Year, Arsenal Condition, Current Condition, RM's Notes
Thoughts: Albys don't seem to have different prices based on years.  The 'rare' years are seldom if ever seen.  The market is so small that *any* Alby attracts a hefty premium.

Chinese: Month, Item Number, Item Link, Description, # Bids, Final Price, Chinese Factory, Arsenal Condition, Current Condition, RM's Notes
Thoughts: I don't know that factory is important in determining the price of a Chinese type 56.  Maybe for DPs or M21 0296s, but if you track those you have to track them all.

Chinese Commercial: Month, Item Number, Item Link Description, # Bids, Final Price, Commercial Chinese Type, Commercial Chinese Condition, Current Condition, RM's Notes
Thoughts: Model type is very important, is anything else?  Condition should have some importance, but honestly how much?

Romanian: Month, Item Number, Item Link, Description, # Bids, Final Price, Year, Arsenal Condition, Current Condition, RM's Notes
Thoughts: See Albanian above minus the price premium.  Ugly red headed stepchild of the SKS wold that get no love and even less respect.

Russian: Month, Item Number, Item Link, Description, # Bids, Final Price, Year, Arsenal, Arsenal Condition, Current Condition, S/N, RM's Notes
Thoughts: Everybody goes into a tizzy when a '53 Izhevsk pops up.  I think it's important, but maybe not as important as we've been treating it?  I have personal biases against elevating a particular year/arsenal onto a pedestal, so I'll disclose that right off the bat.  Maybe the Russians get too much love sometimes?

Yugoslavian: Month, Item Number, Item Link, Description, # Bids, Final Price, Model, Block Letter, Arsenal Condition, Current Condition, RM's Notes
Thoughts: B block, C block is worthless.  Arsenal condition is worthless (they are all refurbs!)   Is tracking the whole group worthless?  So few parade guns or G10s pop up that they are not worth tracking separately perhaps?

Special: Month, Item Number, Item Link, Description, # Bids Starting Price, Final Price, Model, Arsenal Condition, Current Condition, S/N, RM's Notes
Thoughts: Not sure this is totally useful.  It does seem nice to have a year end summary of what the avg price of a papered VN bringback really is I guess.  Trinity guns are so few and far between that maybe it doesn't make sense to track them like I've been doing..

[Greasemonkey]

Keep the RM notes . The does this banana mag make me look fat is fitting at times.

As a reminder Arsenal condition is as-issued/as-imported, vs refurb (heavy light for Russians), vs bubbadness.  Current condition is from Perfect (never seen a perfect gun) to Poor.

Standardize it  ..Refurbished or as issued, the in-between is too vague and grey, there is no clear cut defined industry definintion of a light vs. heavy refurb. Is it 1 part replaced or 7 parts replaced, this was replaced or that was electro-penciled, or is it left to the subjective graders opinion which is which. I think the collective public as a whole only sees the two options, refurb and as issued.

In my opinion condition is subjective, what's fair to one could be titillating to another. The school of does one want a used and abused war horse with stories or a new shiny only ever saw the inside of a box never fired looking like a Winchester 700ADL comes to mind. It's another subject that needs clarity.. does one follow the NRA grading system or another variant.

Again.. opinions, question's, comments are welcome..

[running-man]

Makes sense.  Good observation there!

The Perfect->Excellent->Very Good->Good->Fair->Poor is supposed to follow NRA guidlines, but hell if I can always tell the difference between 50 and 75% bluing in a postage stamp sized GB photo.  I think you've convinced me on the as-issued - refubrished - bubba, I'll drop the heavy and light from the Russians and keep everything as simple as possible. That one little bit should help quite a bit actually.

[Greasemonkey]

Maybe we can abbreviate or condense the condition grading scale. I can see difficulty in judging by postage stamps, hands on or photos of everything in good light is the only way. Defects/positives can always be pointed out in discussions.

Basing off the NRA guides http://www.nramuseum.com/gun-info-research/evaluating-firearms-condition.aspx

Just another idea  open to suggestions and figures

New... In shipping box..unfired since import.. Fairly rare to find,

Excellent /Very good,  call it Good+... An equal to a safe queen/light use/no box/shot at some point or say commercial 99-80%, some handling marks/use can and will be exhibited. The NRA is really close on these two grades.

Good.... Everyday shooter, fun beater, your average ammo processing rifle, one that processes loaded ammo to empty cases, a majority would be good, mechanically good, worn finish/trench art/jungle rot/even some surface corrosion is allowable, or commercial figure 80-35%

Fair/Poor, call it Rough...  Had a real hard life and tons of use type rifle. Needs repair/parts of some nature, almost beyond restore, but not quite, totally savable, commercial is 35% and below.

Bubba,  is everything not in the category's above or unrestorable, barrel cut, metal altered, etc.


I guess you could have a salvage/project grade where they are totally beyond restore. Good for making toys.

That's 4 workable grades, with salvage and bubba rounding it out.

[running-man]

Ok, poll is over.  Russian, Albanian, Romanian in that order.     Thank's to everyone who voted. 

Here's what I think I'm going to do:

• Yugos didn't get a single vote...she gone. 
• I'll keep the special list going just so we can have a year end list in December of what sold during the year. Good for a spot price check even if we can't get a trendline because the sample size is so small.  I'll add LB yugos to the specials moving forward.
• Russian refubs will no longer be classified as "heavy" or "light": We'll have As-issued, Refurbished, Bubba, and Uncertain.
• All years on Albanians and Romys will be dropped.  Years don't matter to the price of these rifles at all.
• The current condition in all categories is getting simplified: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, Uncertain
• The jury is still out on the Chinese and whether I keep them going moving forward.  If the Chinese get dropped, the Commercial Chinese also go unfortunately.  If they are kept, the data record for Chinese will get heavily reduced based on the discussions in this thread.  No more tracking individual factory info in these for certain, maybe sets of /\s, []s, ()s, and <>s plus ghosts, blank/late-build, and DP/DB, but even that is quite a bit of added work. We'll just have to see how Jan turns out with these.

Anything I miss?

[Greasemonkey]

What about doing a quarterly list on "specials", do 3 months rolled into one list since only 1 or 3 at the most pop in a month..  Would that save time from whipping up a separate post for one rifle a month, you could roll 3 months into one post with possibly no more than a half a dozen specials... or even do a bi-annual report.


I agree on everything else

[running-man]

Naw, a post for a single special isn't what takes up the time, it's the sorting of the Yugos and Chinese that take the lion's share.  Cutting some of the info out and whittling down the categories of condition will help quite a bit (I hope anyhow).  Seeing as it's the end of the month, we'll find out soon enough! 

[Loose}{Cannon]

Bye bye chicom research data.   

I was surprised to see any votes on Albanian.  Its not like we dont have a good foothold on Albanians and how many sell on GB in a month?  Isn't it fairly easy to just use the past auctions search feature on GB to see these couple guns? It would seemed to me, folks are more interested in seeing a certain countries current sales value on one page then gather much needed data and information on the unknowns of other nations. 

Current bluebook vs data...   

[Loose}{Cannon]

Same with the Romanian.  We really need to track the 2 Romanians sold each month?  What kinda prophecy data pool does that yeild the files?