How to Collect Vintage Western Toy Guns

Search your local newspaper for estate sales. The easiest way to begin a collection is to buy someone else's. You can go to the ones that mention toys and make a circuit of your city or town. Negotiate the best price you can and buy what is available, then check out what you have purchased later with a book or Internet search. This is a "quick and dirty" method of building a collection. You will certainly find some gems with a real value, but you will also be buying collections with items you might not want. Separate the collections into "keepers," "trades" and "sell."

Swap or trade the parts of these collections you don't want at your local swap meets. These can be found in your local paper, or in some cases, in local specialty trade papers or on websites such as Craigslist.org. Take these items in a carrying case to quickly display them. Put trades into a separate bag to sort at home. You might also have to trade for items as part of a collection or selection you would not want and that allows you to build up more stock to sell on ebay or a similar Internet sales site.

Creast a search on ebay or a similar website for vintage toy guns. They will watch for these items and alert you via email when they're listed for sale. You can then see if you want to bid on the item. You can also use these sorts of sites to sell the unwanted part of your collection and recoup some of the funds you used to build the collection you did want.

List the items singly, as you can get a better price and sell faster. If you sell a group of items, someone may not want to bid and get a lot of items they do not want. If you are left with a group of items after a time, try one really low price to get rid of them.