The best "investment" guns are:

1. Not made any more. Guns like classic American double shotguns, old Winchesters, old Brownings, old Colt handguns, rare or bespoke guns with excellent workmanship, especially with engraving done tastefully.

2. Of high to very high quality/grade, and in good shape. There's a difference I want to express here: Buying old "field grade" shotguns that are in excellent condition will provide nowhere near as much appreciation potential as buying the highest grade shotguns that are in excellent shape. The high grades are just that much rarer...

As an example of the divergence between "excellent condition" and "rare and excellent condition," consider what a Winchester Model 12 goes for. In really nice shape, a field grade 12 or 16 gauge might set you back $700 to $900.

Now go find a Model 12 in Pigeon Grade, 28 gauge. Now you're talking about an $8000 gun. And they go up much more quickly in value over time... because they're that much rarer.

3. Not modified, restored, reblued, etc. Be especially careful of any gun that seems "too good to be true." Example: There are lots of Colt and S&W revolvers out there that have had factory re-blue jobs... which is OK for a nice shooting gun. But since the factory has a record of the gun coming in for the re-blue, you can't ask as much for it as a factory original blue job would have fetched.



Old guns I'm considering buying and putting away as investments: Parker, Fox and Lefever shotguns, Winchester, Ballard, Sharps rifles, Colt, old S&W revolvers, Lugers. From what I'm observing about the investment gun market, old militaria arms appreciate at a much slower rate because they were usually made in such large numbers, unless you have something that was owned by someone famous and you can prove it with documentation and provenance, then you might really have something. eg, Goering's Luger. Rifles owned by Teddy Roosevelt, or something similar.

The big problem in using guns as an investment or hedge against inflation is that they're relatively illiquid as investments - but then, farmers are used to that being land-rich. Land is a relatively illiquid investment, but you can borrow against land, whereas you can't borrow against collectable guns (that I know of, anyway).