If you sell them yourself and ship them through a dealer who has his books audited from time to time by ATF, expect to get a phone call when they see your name over and over. That's how I ended up having to get my FFL. I would constantly be upgrading my collection pieces to higher condition and/or lower serial numbers and culling the ones they replaced. Two agents came and talked to me at my house for several hours. When they left, I thought I had convinced them that I was just a collector, but a couple weeks later, they called again and said they needed to hand-deliver a letter that I had to sign for. It was a cease and desist letter stating that their conclusion was that I was operating as an unlicensed dealer and to stop selling guns until I obtained a FFL of my own. I got right on that and had my license about 9 weeks later.
I didn't bother arguing the point that they intentionally truncated a paragraph from the regulations that they quoted in their letter. In the actual regs, it goes on to say something to the effect that "this does not apply to a collector selling part or all of his collection". I didn't argue because I had planned on getting a FFL one day anyway so I could do it as a small business after I retired. So now that I am retired, I have my FFL as planned, but I ended up having to get it 11 years early. The problem with having a FFL is that you need to show that you are using it and moving firearms, and to call it a viable business in the eyes of the IRS, you need to show a profit. So it becomes more like work and less like an enjoyable hobby.
Oh, I asked them what the threshold was for them to consider a guy an unlicensed dealer. They said it wasn't written down anywhere but their rule of thumb was no more than 3 guns per year. That only applied to selling, not buying.
I didn't bother arguing the point that they intentionally truncated a paragraph from the regulations that they quoted in their letter. In the actual regs, it goes on to say something to the effect that "this does not apply to a collector selling part or all of his collection". I didn't argue because I had planned on getting a FFL one day anyway so I could do it as a small business after I retired. So now that I am retired, I have my FFL as planned, but I ended up having to get it 11 years early. The problem with having a FFL is that you need to show that you are using it and moving firearms, and to call it a viable business in the eyes of the IRS, you need to show a profit. So it becomes more like work and less like an enjoyable hobby.
Oh, I asked them what the threshold was for them to consider a guy an unlicensed dealer. They said it wasn't written down anywhere but their rule of thumb was no more than 3 guns per year. That only applied to selling, not buying.
