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East of Broken Bow | Back in the day my now deceased brother in law would get together and get matching guns (this was back 20+ years ago after I was first married). We would go to the same store, order 2 identical guns, and when they showed up, pick them up together. We did that every year or two. Normally we didn't get anything fancy or super expensive, but rather things we thought would be fun (and usually cheap) to shoot. One year we got Ruger 10-22s, another year we got matching NAA mini revolvers with 22LR and 22MAG cylinders, and usually a bunch of ammo at the same time. We frequented the gun store pretty regularly, sometimes one or the other buying something, but we got the matching guns together right around Christmas, as our Christmas presents to ourselves. Anyway, the owner got to know us pretty well, and often knew he had an easy mark when he saw us coming, especially my BIL, as he liked to spend, I mean 'invest' any extra $$$ he had lying around in guns (looking back I don't think he ever lost money on any of the guns he ever sold).
Anyway, one year in late December we walked in, and the owner smiled, and said he was glad to see us come in. He had just gotten 2 matching Ruger 9MM pistols in cases a few days before, and thought of us. Long story short, they kind of had a unique look to them (but we didn't know why at the time) the price seemed fair for what we got, and he gave us a discount on a half case of ammo. For some reason we didn't go out to my farm and shoot them right away (he lived in town) so we agreed to go to the local range maybe a month or 6 weeks later. When we got to the range, we opened up the cases and the guys next to us stopped what they were doing and asked where we got the guns. We said we just got them recently from the gun store in town and were here to test them out. Well, we were then informed that what we had gotten were Ruger's first ever limited edition 9MM P series pistols, and that they were already worth about 50% more than we paid for them. Well, now we didn't know if we wanted to shoot them for sure or not, so we went back into town and talked to the gun store owner about it. He kind of chuckled and said that we were such regular buyers of matching pistols he thought we'd like them. I know the case they came in said 'Limited Edition' but why didn't he tell us they were Ruger's first ever limited edition 9MM (P89). He said he assumed we knew that. We then commented that some guys already offered us about 50% over the purchase price for them. He then laughed again and said he had no idea they would go up in value so fast, or he might not have sold them so cheap. He then went to his computer, banged a few keys and came back shaking his head. Turns out they were a limited edition, limited to one per authorized Ruger dealership, and he just happened to wind up with two because another dealer needed a gun he had, and let him have the one for his store.
To this day, I field strip and oil it every once in a while, but still haven't shot it thinking it will keep going up in value, although I never look to see what it's worth, it's going to stay here until it's in my estate. Anyway, BIL and myself went back to the store and got $199 slightly used P95s for shooting, and they have been good guns, lots of trouble free rounds through them. The Limited edition ones have a unique color scheme that was never again factory available in a Ruger P89, at least as far as I know (and the case was Black and had 'Limited Edition' written in gold letters on it instead of the normal gray case that came with the P series at the time.
Edited by HuskerJ 1/7/2025 14:03
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