A Brief Tour of the Rock Island Auction Company

I have been spending this past week at the Rock Island Auction Company, making a series of videos on guns that will be in their upcoming regional auction (they will start running on the site here at the beginning of June). I posted a few photos on Facebook, and had someone request a video. Well…why not? So I put together a brief tour of the place. This coming auction will have about 6,500 guns for sale, and that makes for some pretty impressive racks of guns to browse through looking for good video subjects. 🙂

For the record, the “regional” auctions at RIA differ from the “premiere” auctions in a couple significant ways. The premiere auctions have the nicer and more valuable guns, almost always sold as individual pieces. The regional auctions have the less valuable guns, which are mostly batched together into multi-gun lots. The idea is that the company wants to keep the dollar value of each lot higher (usually $1000+) to make for an efficient business, and doing that with things like reasonably common surplus military arms requires putting them into groups.

Rock Island Auction Company

13 Comments

  1. Ian, How many firearms did you bid on during the last auction? Always a need for new video stars!

  2. Weres the reindeer and sleigh, he he… Anyway, I wonder if someone can help me out. Do you know the Gerat06h’s self opening bolt, is you holding it intergral to the design i.e. The shoulder stock, has to be in the shoulder for the “recoil” to be transferred, I mean if you fired it like a pistol one handed and the entire unit moved back, would the recoil not be transferred- By transferred I mean said force, actuating the carrier while the bolt is engaged into the barrel.

    My query is in regards using the principle in a pistol, in that “That’s why you can’t, because recoil moves the entire thing”

    • Slightly off topic but still, inertia all that, is it… You are part of the design, being inert “if you will” static like, in that rifles design. Puzzles me, not being particularly up on the science etc.

      • I have seen the authors video on the roller delayed Hk pistol P9 is it… But that seems to use the rollers differently, more like a Mp5, actually I suppose that is my question. The Gerat06h doesn’t work exactly the same as P9 does it, presumably because there’s more pressure. So does the G3? E.g That’s 7.62 Nato, the recoil has to move the bolt, not the pressure?

    • I watched the P9 video again, think I get it… It’s the rollers which allow the movement, the movement back which is what I got stuck on- How can it, if the side doesn’t move. But the slide can move can’t it, because the rollers roll back hence the delay not the lock. Which I think means I misunderstood the Gerat06h, it has a fixed firing pin as oppose the P9 but the carrier doesn’t move first does it I thought it was that bounce thing i.e. recoil on the initial shot moving the carrier like a piston would. But the carrier can move with the bolt against the recoil spring because of the rollers, delay rather than locked. I was thinking more of a type of Cz52, but with the slide being the bolt carrier, that would move because the barrel moves this is that Pedersen thing I thought why doesn’t recoil the slide anyway. All good, live an learn he he.

  3. Did anyone else think Ian was going to show the men’s room before getting to the storage shelves?

  4. It Always gives me an unsettled feeling watching Ian bare handed touching the firearms without wiping them down. I don’t want to bid on any with rusty finger prints.
    Wipe off that Spencer please.

  5. Ian, please tell me someone got a pic/vid of your face when you first walked into that warehouse. It must have been priceless.

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