Price of drum
Hi Robert, no offence taken at all, yes the price you see is correct and this is the reasoning behind it. In the past before the goverment passed the capacity restrictions you could buy drum magazines out of the US or abroad (typically from the US) and at that time I was buying drums for around $200.00 - $300.00 for a decent WW2 drum. Of course these were nice "live" drumd which were operational and at that time you could actuallly take your live Thompson to the range and fire it. Then came the capacity law which made the drums go to 5 rounds - even though a Bren drum could still be full capacity - this discussion for another day. Some people did convert them to 4 rounds by installing many terrible rivets (usually 3 or 4) on the outside making the drumlegal but terrible to look at. Some people just went underground with them and they sit in a dark hidding place probably never to see the light of day again. Now we fast forward to about 5 years ago and a huge hoard of unissued unused Thompsons were found over seas in the Ukraine untouched since WW2 and for the most part they were cut up into parts lits for the Us as well as deactivated for European sales and some made their way here. Not to long ago the goverment also changed the rules on deactivated guns as well as dummy guns - they do not allow any more deactivated guns into the country and have banned the importation of dummy guns also what is in privated hands in Canada can stay but no more can come in . But in the US all those Tommy Gun parts kits have turned into many many dummy guns because deactivation laws are much different theire and everyone started to snatch up drum and stick mags for their dummy guns besides the usual collectors of the magazines - Thompson collectors. The price and availability of the magazines was so great that Auto Ordnance raised their production of reproduction magqzines as well they have been selling many many of thier single shot Thompson's around the US and most people want a drum for those also. This has raised the price of drums all across the US for the past 5 years making a repro drum (like I am selling for $350.00) sell for $289.00 if you can find one and the WW2 sell for $850.00 depending on condition (look around the internet sites in the US and most have SOLD OUT in their Thompson drum listings. In the US a Colt era 50 round magazine will sell for about $1200.00 and up and a good condition 100 round drum from the Colt era will sell for about $4500.00 and up, recently a minty one (100 round) with matching numbers sold in the US for $6500.00. The final 2 factors which have dictated pricing right now is the US is changing their capacity laws in many ststes and the dealers will not ship any high capacity mags - drum mags to about 10 - 12 US states making it harder to get them in general and with all this talk from Obama about gun laws coming into place it is getting very tough to find any mags for any guns at a reasonable price any more, believe me I have been to about 6 gun shows in the US in the last 3 months and they are a zoo - packed to the rafters with people buying guns and ammo like another war is coming. In OHio I waited in a line to get in for an hour and a hlaf and by the time I got in the line was about double in length. This has caused pricing to go up and up. So I am just selling at the current market value and I have not seen any Thompson drums up our way in many years and I know there are many deactivated Thompson's out there. If someone was to give me a reasonable offer I would consider it but it will not be far off the price. I have 14 Thompson's in my collection, if the drums do not sell, it's ok I will keep them. Sorry for such a long winded explanation, I tried to make it as short as I could.
I hope this makes sense. Richard
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