Armslist, everyone’s favorite 2A-friendly Craig’slist alternative, has gone pay for play. Armslist has long had premium accounts aimed at dealers looking to advertise their wares. However, recently Armslist has begun requiring all accounts to be premium to contact or list a firearm, knife, light, or whatever a user wants to sell.
I have had a love/hate relationship with Armslist. I’ve sold a few guns over the website and bought even more. I love the idea of being able to connect with private sellers via a single website. You can find all kinds of treasures there if you’re patient and know what you’re looking for. It’s where I got my West German P220, for example.
Yes, lots of stuff is overpriced, but the occasional weird, rare, or unique thing crosses my path, and I love that.
I hate Armslist because of the scams, junk emails, and general time-wasting that goes into selling anything on the site. I’ve gotten tons of bogus offers, one including the word “Boat?” once. Some guy wanted to trade me a boat that was sitting in a junkyard for the rifle I was selling. I’ve been hit up with offers to trade car rims, exotic birds…you name it.
Then there’s the old scam where someone offers to buy my firearm and send me a cashier’s check. The check will be for too much money, and the buyer will ask me to send the difference back. When the cashier’s check turns out to be fake, you’re out the entire amount of the check and the difference you sent the buyer.
Armslist Premium…Worth the Squeeze?
The new Armslist premium personal accounts promise to do away with the scammers and tire-kickers by charging $6.99 a month for a membership. This auto-drafting month-to-month membership allows you to post items for sale or to contact sellers. The sign-up process is relatively simple, and once complete, you can easily post or contact sellers just like Armslist of old.
With your premium membership, you can also create search alerts, do ‘power’ searches, get a view counter on listings and access to Armslist.Deals. Paying members can have five listings with three photos per listing.
I have a few issues here.
First, if I’m paying, I feel like a five listings limit is silly. Also, while they advertise a view counter, I must be blind because I don’t see it. Armslist.Deals, which is a separate website, doesn’t seem to require a membership to access anyway. It’s all affiliate links to different retailers.
Inside Armslist.Deals
From the outside looking in, the deals seem incredible. Today I saw 200 rounds of buckshot for 12.99. The post at Armslist.deals says it’s $167 off and that “Our systems indicate this deal is in stock.”
I click the link, and I’m taken to Palmetto State Armory.
Sadly, the ammo wasn’t in stock, but it did get me to click the link. That creates a cookie, and that cookie could last for 30 days. If I purchase anything from Palmetto State Armory in that time, Armslist.Deals gets a commission.
All of their deals appear insane. How about ten D&H AR mags for ten bucks! That’s only a buck a piece! And it’s actually in stock at PSA. But, the price doesn’t match, it’s actually $119.99.
None of the prices listed seem at all accurate, and some of the deal links are bad. They seem to be designed to get you to click to capture that cookie. That’s poor form as far as I’m concerned.
Search Efforts
The Armslist Power Search feature is an advanced search that allows you to be insanely specific to track down guns by name, keyword, location, price, caliber, and beyond. It’s easy to use and easy to find.
Unfortunately I can’t seem to find how to set up a search alert. From my account management screen, I can see a search alerts option, but it just takes me to a page saying I have no search alerts. I can’t seem to find out how to set up a search alert.
Buying, Selling, and Trading
Once I had my premium account set up, I listed a few things for sale. I put up a rifle, a few lights, and an optic I am no longer using. I included details and photos and put them into the Armslist listings for my local area. A lot of your success is going to depend on just how many people are using Armslist in your local area.
Before you create a paid account, you either need to check out the activity level in your area or be willing to travel to a more active area. Only members can contact you, and Armslist specifically warns you not to try to be sneaky and put contact information into your posting. Since I’m reviewing the service as it is, I did no such thing, but I saw that quite a bit.
I wouldn’t want to do that anyway Part of having the paid membership is avoiding the scams and BS artists who populated free Armslist. Tossing your email in a posting seems to be an open invitation to the people you’re paying Armslist to avoid.
With my postings up, I received a few hits and sold the rifle pretty quickly. It’s a seller’s market at the moment, so a reasonably priced semi-auto rifle flew off the shelf. I received zero scam attempts and not a single offer of boats, reptiles, birds, or rims. I got a few lowballers, as you sometimes do, and a few trade offers I wasn’t interested in, but it was definitely a better experience.
The optic and lights remain for sale, at least until the July 3 when my account cancels. I’m not going to keep it on a month-to-month basis. I’ll just revive it in the rare situation in which I sell a firearm.
So Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?
If you just want to use the classified section to sell and buy goods, then Armslist’s new paid service seems to be worth the cost. The premium subscription seems to have gotten rid of the scammers and tire-kickers, which is nice. However, a few of the ‘features’ offered don’t appear to be all that they’re cracked up to be.
For seven bucks a month, I should at least get seven postings instead of only five. The premium account has solved some problems, but, at least for me, it’s too to keep going beyond the few times I ever need to sell something. If you’re a more regular seller, your mileage may vary.
I think Armslist could offer a lot more as part of the paid membership, especially if they actually offered some form of exclusive club member deals. As of now, the new service doesn’t give me anything that would make me want to keep my subscription on an ongoing basis.
Excellent review. And I agree the 5 post limit is odd for a paid subscription.
They probably want you to purchase the vendor subscription if youre selling more than 5 things
Thank you for the good, the bad and the ugly of this service provider.
I’ll probably never use their service.
The snarcastic me thinks that they’ll create a super premium account allowing 10 posts for only $$.
Most places that pull this crap don’t have much inventory, so they’re making their money by charging a fee for the ability to search for what they don’t have. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been suckered by something like this, so I’ll pass.
They seem shadey as hell and desperate for money when it comes to business decisions. I don’t sell enough to pay a premium and now that they went premium there’s hardly anyone on their at least in my area.
Used the site to sell a few guns over the years but the scam attempts have gotten so bad I’ll go to gunbroker.com if I want to sell.
Some of these morons will try the same approach more than once on the same item.
Demanding a certified check gets them to go away. A certified can’t be stopped once issued.
Ask the buyer to send via U S Mail a Postal money order. If they defraud you via the U S Mail even if it is one way, it is a federal crime. By “one way”, I mean if you make the deal online or via telephone and they use the mail to pay and defraud, then they have committed a crime even though you did not use the U S Mail for any part of the transaction. Take the Postal money order to your local post office and they can tell you if it is legit and not on any stolen list etc
I dont think nigerians care about federal charges
I agree but the certified check demand really shuts them up.
I used them back when it was pay to have your listings put to the top of the list. I figured that was worth it if I was trying to run some guns quickly. But pay to play? Bye Felicia. I’ll find a local source, not that I’m selling any guns this past year and a half… But Montana Gun Trader is something I’ve used in the past as well. Sucks for Armslist, they lost a lot of business this way, and you can tell just by browsing. If your site needs donations to survive, ask and ye shall receive. But I’m not paying just to list. Especially the price they are asking and the duration.
At $7.00 a month, that’s $84.00 a year. That $350.00 pistol is now a $434.00 pistol
Hard pass on this one.
If it took a year to sell one gun you might be doing it wrong. I sell 2 or 3 per month so it adds $2 or $3 to the cost of what would be sitting unsold in my safe. I don’t expect advertising for free and when you factor in the court fights they have fought to keep the system alive, I fully understand them needing income.
I miss backpage. To be honest I feel backpage was superior when it came to listing firearms. You can tell armslist isn’t what it used to be; people are not using it as much. Not as many listings. I have a free account just so I can email people. You also notice people putting in there email or phone number in the listing.
Backpage was good for many things…
Hahaha yea. Ol backpage.
Another excellent reason to continue to trust my local gun dealer instead. I only just became acquainted with Armslist so fortunately I am not out anything.
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I’ve never seen a reason to bother using Armslist. Around here it seems it’s overpriced crap or scam ads(like in Gary,IN). My favorite pawnshop uses them so mebbe I need to take a closer look…or not.
It might be beneficial to compare / contrast Armslist with Gunbroker at some point. I use Gunbroker and never experienced any of these issues, so I’m curious what (if any) advantage Armslist might offer to make it worth people’s while.
Well, GB is not free by any means. And many people like the idea of buying a firearm with neither party even knowing the name of the other. Well, in non-commie states anyway. In the commie states you are stuck with the real gangland underground if you don’t want to tell the government the details of every transaction.
Bought one gun off of it 8 years ago; it’s just too full of scammers to bother with.
Just perused IN & ILL Armslist. Pathetic is an apt description. There’s a lot more on my local NW IN fakebook super secret hush hush gun buy & sell group(and I don’t know or trust anyone there!).
Gunbroker.com…… nuff said
Last time I did any kind of pay for play I got an itch that just didn’t go away.
It’s a good idea to do all your business online. Safe , secure, and hidden from prying eyes. One think I like is giving my credit card or bank account number to people I dont know from non existant companies.
Eventually everything will be purchased online with a credit card. No need for that hard currency that cant be tracked or hacked or documented. Ahhh The Future.
I’ve used Armslist in the past to buy and had good results. It certainly helps when shopping locally. However, I am not paying $7 a month to maybe buy 1 gun a year. Plus, when I registered my account (but didn’t pay), I started getting tons of spam emails from crappy “affiliated” vendors. Armslist is dead to me.
BRUH ILL TRADE U A FMK 4 UR HI POWER ITS JUST LIKE A GLOCK LETS DO THIS MAN!
(My Armslist experience)
I recently paid to use Armslist to sell a couple things and I STILL got scammers. What a waste of my time.
just checked my phone contacts, i’ve 18 like minded individuals met on there that have continued to be sources for various items. good networking, easy to filter out the doodlewhoppers. i learned to respond with “want, have cash.” meet at the range, expend some lead, go home with new thing. absolutely my best source for ammo; no shipping, no tax. quite a few knife and airgun deals as well. hard to beat cash and carry.
no way i’m giving them a dime. if the listing has no contact info, too bad.
In my area, prior to armslist going premium it was a fairly active place for people to sell their guns without the 15% up charge from consignment, background check fee, etc.
Since they went premium it has dwindled to nothing but vendors..
I wasn’t looking to buy from vendors and pay new prices for a used gun. No thanks. No reason to use Armslist anymore.
I gave up using them when they stopped allowing phone numbers to be put in the ads.
Armslist has always been the internet marketplace for chumps who want to get ripped off.
Somehow Gunbroker manages to keep fraud in check. But AL has always been the worst. This new plan will at least reduce the fraud on AL.
The folks at Armslist made a big mistake. I never had any trouble with scammers or tire kickers.
I just made it a policy to only buy face to face from persons who live in the same state as me. Let’s assume someone has 3 cans of pistol powder and they live only 50 miles from my home. I’m I suppose to pay Armslist $84. a year when the powder is only $75.????
Looks to me like Armslist doesn’t like shooters. If they would have charged 10% on every
sale it would be treating everyone more fairly.
Why is Armslist now posting garbage ads where the premium paid firearms ads should be. This immediately pushes my premium paid firearm ads to the back of the listings? Maybe it’s time to cancel my account.
In Maine and NH,Armslist is vendors selling full price and spam if you sign up. When I use it I only did face to face.
Gun listings.org is a great face to face but you must include your email in the body of the ad and camouflage your phone # to avoid generated spam. In Iowa and Ohio it’s grown exponentially and it’s FREE!
Armslist moving to a premium based service is nothing more than a cash grab under the guise of “filtering out spam & scam offers”. As a result of this, you rarely if ever see anything for sale from a private seller, it is almost filled with listings from actual gun stores, which completely defeats the purpose of the site to begin with. For years I bought and sold items from Armslist with little to no issue, even putting my personal phone number & email into the public details of my listings. If you cannot deal with a little bit of spam, or figure out an offer is a scam, why are you trying to sell something online in the first place? Not to mention, if you ask or criticize Armslist about their decision to do this, they will not respond to you, they will just delete your message and block you from viewing their posts. I don’t think I will ever return to Armslist, even if they revert to a free to play system.
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