The Vegas Trip, Part The First

Okay, Vegas was fun. I am philosophically opposed to determining how fun a gambling trip is based on the winning or losing--far as I'm concerned, the House won when I bought that plane ticket. In short, I lost my entire allotment of gambling cash, slightly more quickly than I really wanted to. I had family around though, and they were charitable. Lots of family. It turned into a half-family-vacation. My parents, 2/3 of my aunts and uncles, my grandma, and a cousin and his (now-) fiancee showed up, and that happens rarely enough.

Of course, the whole trip was prefaced on the excuse (my excuse, at least) that an uncle had a booth at the Gun & Knife show at Mandalay Bay, featuring antique guns and knives. I wish I had a web address for it, but I didn't quite catch it. VERY impressive, though, and I'm not a gun guy. I also wish I could pimp out my uncle's knife web site, but I'm a pretty big fan of the anonymity (or at least obscurity) thing.

So I walked through that show with my dad, after a (approximately) mile hike THROUGH Mandalay Bay. The knives and most of the swords are kind of irritating. On the edge of homoerotic and useless, approaching Xena-fan weird. Too much form, no clear indication of function other than looking nice. I know I'm biased, but my uncle makes expensive, expensive folding knives, with some of the most exotic and attractive flourishes and materials one could imagine. An example: Damascus steel blade, mammoth-tusk handle, and trim. I'm afraid to quote a price, but I believe it surpasses my truck's value. And I've probably got the nomenclature wrong. The knife materials available at the show were also pretty impressive--the people my uncle gets the mother of pearl, blades, etc. There's plenty of ways to mess with damascus steel.

The guns, though... There's plenty of stuff in there that's impractical to the point of lunacy. The Novelties, I called them. For Display Purposes doesn't impress me. But that stuff was far and few between. Most of the stuff was straight-up antique weapons. Lots of stuff in the $3-$5000 range, actually pretty attainable for an enthusiast, and perfectly usable in the real world, if one is so inclined. In short, the stuff you'd actually want to buy, shoot, and most importantly hunt with. My dad is actually able to distinguish the various models and ages of Winchester Model 70's, oddly enough.

So there were the common old things, all well and good. I hate to say common when they're from the late 1800's and early 20th century, but there's plenty of them. And then there were the Really Old ones. The big winners in my mind: pre-Soviet rifles, oddly shaped to my eye and ornate. Starting around $75,000. Start saving up. A couple from the Ottoman Empire, too.

There was one fellow selling "combo" rifles. Oddly shaped barrels (from the front, they look like blobs), featuring (for example) two .22 rifle barrels and a 20-gauge barrel, with accompanying triggers. Lots of combos on that thing. Manufacturer's name started with a P. There was another section with newer shotguns--one manufacturer had a going rate of about $36,000. Exquisite, and with shotguns you do get what you pay for, as far as I can tell. Precision is worth a lot, when you consider that moving that big huge device around at speed is helped when it feels like you're moving a single mass, not a collection of shifting masses that need to be brought into alignment before firing.

Then I left. My dad and an uncle had tickets to the SHOT show, so I found the larger mass of family and blew some money with them.

Also, on Friday night I got blisteringly drunk on the Strip and made a few phone calls. I don't know how many more people are going to ask about that. Face it: I'm susceptible to the drunk dialies and I have a cellphone.