Cabela's Becoming Useful Again?

[Jim Watson]

From “okay I’ll take it” until I walked out the door was 2.5 hours. The norm at my LGS is 15 minutes.

I got my little Plastic M&P .22 Compact there; I don't recall if it were under a Cabelas or Bass Pro sign at the time.
Price was $50 off list which made it only a little higher than the volume store 70 miles away, so I bit. It wasn't 2.5 hours but it was far far longer than any other purchase.

[Borderland]

I go to Cabela's about once every two years to see if anything has changed. About the only change I can see after my last visit a few weeks ago is the staff will just ignore you and try hard not to make eye contact.

I've got a few good deals there on guns but that was years ago before BP purchased them.

The p-239 in question here is a $600 gun just about anywhere. I have several and always looking to buy more if the price is right. I keep up on the street prices. The odds of finding one like that at that price are about the same as being struck by lightning.

[okie john]

I get good deals from Cabelas in three ways.

First, it's hard to shop for me, so in exasperation, my friends and family now give me Cabelas cards for birthdays, Father's Day, Christmas, etc. I keep an eye on the site until I find exactly what I want.

Second, I scan the Gun Library for things that are misidentified. Some of their employees don't understand the subtleties of specific models and will price an uncommon or limited-production variant as if it were the more common version. You have to do this almost daily to stay ahead of the other vultures.

Third, I look for things that have suffered easily corrected modifications, like putting an early Bell & Carlson stock on a desirable rifle or cutting a factory stock really short for a kid to use.


Okie John

[Stephanie B]

So, a buddy of mine just snagged a pristine 9mm SIG P239 for $405 out the door from Cabela's. The store employees stated that they had a "come to Jesus" moment with how overpriced they've historically been, and apparently are pivoting business models to meet or beat market prices with a focus on used guns.

Anyone else with recent Cabela's experience notice this? I'm wondering if it's store specific or company wide.

I've thought that Cabela's was "today's used guns at next year's prices".

(Actually, more like "four or five years down the road" prices.)

[Glenn E. Meyer]

I remember that I went to Cabela's and asked where the shooting gloves where. The clerk said they don't have any. So I wandered away into a big display of them. Oh well.

[Pacioli]

I was ready to buy a used semi-auto pistol of some sort out of the Bargain Cave/Gun Library a few years ago. The clerk took it out and it went to remove the slide to inspect it. He told me I couldn't do that. I handed it back to him and that was the last time I considered buying there.

[Flashman]

Just visited my local (Oregon) Cabela's for the first time in about six months. Plenty of new guns, mostly expensive. The Gun Library was a ghost of its former self. Few used guns, many new guns in the cases. Nothing interesting. It wasn't worth stopping by.

[OfficeCat]

I go to Cabela's about once every two years to see if anything has changed. About the only change I can see after my last visit a few weeks ago is the staff will just ignore you and try hard not to make eye contact.

Same here, except the clerks' avoidance of eye contact has pretty much always been the norm for me and is the reason I only go there once every couple of years. Maybe I'm just not the kind of guy the kind of guys who work at Cabela's like to make eye contact with. I'm OK with that.

[LtDave]

Unless it’s a bargain similar to a pristine P239 for $405, I will never darken their doorstep again, at least for firearms. About 6 years ago I bought a pistol at the one nearby here. From “okay I’ll take it” until I walked out the door was 2.5 hours. The norm at my LGS is 15 minutes.

My last purchase at the Cabela's in Glendale, AZ went about the same. They did give me a 5% military discount for some reason.

[RevolverRob]

When visiting a friend in Austin a couple of weeks ago, we popped into the Buda/Kyle Cabelas. I picked up some much needed parts to finish an 870 'build'. The prices on guns in the gun library ranged from, "okay" (a Colt Police Positive that looked about 85% was $450) to "not a damn chance" (a Smith K38 with 10% blue for $900).

They did have plenty of used pump guns and and a Remington Gamemaster on the racks that were all decently priced The Gamemaster was in .30-06 and was ~450 ircc, a nice clean Stevens humpback pump for $275. Guns in the cases seemed about average, or at least nothing screamed, "Crazy!". But I don't pay that much attention to new gun prices. Perk of 'getting old' I guess is that new plastic fantastics do not register on my radar as interesting in the least.

Ammo was relatively abundant and not particularly expensive. They had 25-round boxes of 147-grain HST in stock for $28, not a great price, but if one was in need. Barnes 115 Tac-XP was also plentiful on the shelf at about a buck a round. They had 115, 124, and 147 FMJ on hand. I can't recall the brand, but it was one I would buy, $14/50. Not cheap, but also again, not particularly expensive all things considered.

___

I've never really considered Cabelas to be much more than a time waster. I've only ever gone in looking specifically for something one time. This time we popped in after a heavy lunch and wandered around to digest. Just happened I found some parts I was looking for.