Why do people pay $2300+ for a custom glock?

[Epoxy]

Please educate me on Salient/Agency arms. Why are people so willing to pay so much money for a glock with, to my untrained eye, a trigger, stippling, barrel, and slide cuts? Don't get me wrong, I'm a glock guy, but this craze seems to be getting out of hand. I may be biased because I understand how simple it is to create those slide cuts in a program like solidworks, but I can't seem to put together why someone would pay that much except to look cool on instagram. Enlighten me.

[w3453l]

I have no experience with Salient/Agency Arms Glocks. What I think is this: not everyone is a gun guy and/or understands much about Glocks or other guns for that matter. At the same time there's a lot of people with a lot of money to spend, and to them really the $2300 isn't all that much.

This isn't the best analogy, but you can spend anywhere from $400 - $40000 on a watch. I'm not comparing the quality/time put into manufacturing the more expensive watches; the point I'm trying to highlight is that there's people out there that do have the disposable income to drop on something like an expensive watch. So they will simply because they can.

[JulyAZ]

Instagram/Facebook likes?

[mkmckinley]

Perceived status, showing off, owning the new, cool thing etc.

[okie john]

Please educate me on Salient/Agency arms. Why are people so willing to pay so much money for a glock with, to my untrained eye, a trigger, stippling, barrel, and slide cuts? Don't get me wrong, I'm a glock guy, but this craze seems to be getting out of hand. I may be biased because I understand how simple it is to create those slide cuts in a program like solidworks, but I can't seem to put together why someone would pay that much except to look cool on instagram. Enlighten me.

It's a combination of things.

Changing how the gun looks is a big part of it, but people engrave Purdeys or get custom paint jobs on cars for the same reason. Some folks buy in to the idea that those mods enhance performance, just like people hang odd things off of 1911s and buy Porsche 911s with whale tails. There's also a culture of spending a LOT of cash on mods just to be able to say that you did.


Okie John

[Epoxy]

I understand aesthetics, but I guess part of my question is there anything functionally better on these guns to justify the price?

[okie john]

I understand aesthetics, but I guess part of my question is there anything functionally better on these guns to justify the price?

It depends on who you ask. Some say yes. Others say that some of those mods actually hurt performance. But performance isn't necessarily the point.


Okie John

[Kain]

Part of it is that some need to have the latest and greatest, or at least the new hotness. So yeah, a status symbol. I see that some in the competitions that I shoot. Generally those are the guys who spend more on looks than I spent on my gun, my back up gun, and all my ammo, and car, and I will beat them like a rented mule from a step son because they aren't shooters, than are hobbyists with more money than brains.

Then you are the ones who think that they can buy their way to the top. Whether by buying the gun/s used by the top shooters, or thinking that if they are spending a lot they much be getting an something that the others don't. I refer to those guys as the gun of the month club. And there have been seasons where I have shot against some of these guys and damn near every month they were shooting something different. Buy hardware is not going to fix a software issue and every gun is going to be a little different, when you are in a game of fractions a little bit different can cost you lots, at least in my experience when you are in the top brackets, that one miss can be the game.

Now, all of that said, could the guns offer something over the regular or even lesser priced models that have had some work done? Sure. My current competition gun that I have been shooting since June of last year, does have a lot of very small features that do offer improvements over my older gun and I do notice them, and when I calculate my stats for the last year from when I went to it to what I was doing with my older gun, there was an improvement, albeit that of less than 1%, about .6% if I recall right. Granted I switched mid season and I will have a better idea after I spend more time behind with the competition season ramping up. Does that make that gun worth literally 5 times what I paid for my old gun? Debatable. Highly debatable.

In the end I would say this, if you at the point where you are outshooting and outperforming the gun you have, then you need to start looking at something better, and possible more expensive to gain an improvement over what you have currently. If you can't do that though, honestly, you are wasting money on gear when you need to build skill. I am no less guilty of that than anyone else here, but it is the truth. Find a gun that fits you, that you like, that is reliable, and learn it inside and out, and run it until the tits fall off. See what you need changed to improve YOUR performance, not what you see, and in the end you will improve yourself. Otherwise you are chasing smoke.

[Tremors]

I think it makes people feel good so it helps with their confidence. Its like when you got new shoes as a kid it made you feel like you can run faster. Id prefer to pay for ammunition or more training.

[Linebacker]

Simplicity is beauty in my eyes. No race guns for me.