A Glock Exhibit

The Missouri Valley Arms Collectors Association hosts a collector show every July in Kansas City, MO. It’s one of the larger collector focused shows in North America (they announced this year that they were the fifth largest, but I have no knowledge of where those stats come from). A couple of years back, I got together with two of my Glock buddies and decided we should go to the show and set up a display booth. It was equal parts ornery and pride that inspired us: ornery for wanting to mess with the “boomers” who only think Colt and Winchester are collectible and pride of showing of what many years of Glock collection have accumulated. Much to our surprise, we received a very warm welcome and even took home one of the honorable mention awards for our display.

The response was enough that we have decided to keep at it and continue to try to refine our display each year. This year, the layout was much cleaner than previous versions and there were three specific areas of focus: Section 1 focused on police marked or specific serial numbered guns that were all former service weapons. Section 2, in honor of Glock discontinuing their .40 S&W models was dedicated to each of the guns that had been produced in that caliber. Section 3 was a selection of various non-black Glocks, but all factory produced, not cerakoted and featured many training models and simmunition guns as well as OD Green, Battlefield Green, Gray, Flat Dark Earth, and Coyote Tan factory tinted polymer pistols.

Being our third year displaying, it seems that we have developed a reputation and a small following and there were many attendants of the show who commented that they had been looking forward to seeing what we would have out this year. Believe it or not, there wasn’t a single mention of Glocks not being a collectible pistol but there was lots of disappointment over the fact that we wouldn’t sell any of the pistols.

I should mention, due to the signage, Dr. Cox is an engineer from Wichita, KS and is one of the sponsors of the display each summer. We chose to put his name on the signage to pay homage, but also because it rhymes and catches everyone’s attention.