Quote Originally Posted by sbgixxer View Post
I think it's mostly the state dismantling what keeps the hobby interesting. It used to be that whenever I wanted to try a new firearm, I could usually find one for sale here. I'd meet the seller somewhere discreet, we'd chat and make a deal. I'd try the firearm out and if I didn't like it then it'd go up on the site again for someone else to try. I was buying and selling all the time w/o losing money to fees and time driving to specific FFLs (sometimes twice) and waiting around a gun shop for the state to do what they require. Add in ammo prices ($500 range days?) combined with not knowing what will be illegal next week has just made the hobby tiresome.
Yes.

To get more people in the door, although probably not all quality posters, open up the Trading Post now that Armslist requires a monthly fee. COAR's advantage over national firearm sites is that the majority of posters live in Colorado. I personally would much rather do business face-to-face with someone local (and likely with feedback) than some stranger on another site from another state with transactions including shipping fees and the potential for misrepresented products.

I've read it many times, "We'll shut the Trading Post down..." Why? Who's harmed by someone buying or selling through COAR without the minimum number of posts/time on keyboard? Odds are, some of the new members will turn out to quality posters that stick around for years.

Building personal relations through many face-to-face transactions and unaffiliated events has kept me coming back to COAR to discuss firearms, local/regional/national topics, and to share information. I tend to visit other national forums for the expert firearm opinions and product reviews. Although there are some very knowledgeable members on COAR, it's hard to compete with national forums with hundreds of thousands or millions of members.

My $.02