N/A Why PCP airguns are so expensive?

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Apples versus bacon

1-air guns are self-contained. No powder. Less mess, less cleaning and lower ammo costs

2-with rare exception You can shoot air guns on your property legally. Can't shoot my 300 weatherby without traveling a significant distance and spending a significant amount of time.

3-sound. The older I get the more I appreciate quiet which airguns afford and hearing protection being necessary with powder burners is almost annoying since I'm spoiled by shooting air guns constantly

4-accuracy. I've built a lot of 1022s. Out of the box even with premium ammo they suck and after building they might be able to group at 50 yards similar to some of my high-end PCPs but at a hundred yards they struggle.

Probably leaving other things out but this is off the top of my head. Apple's versus bacon
 
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Raider03 said:
Most of higher cost is from low volumes, how many Notos does Umarex sell compared to a Ruger 10/22? And PCPs are more complex then firearms, more components and sealing surfaces.
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True to some point. Take some other, less popular .22 rifle. Like Crickett for $139. I doubt they have sold millions of those.

Also Notos is somewhat regularly out of stock in our local airgun shop, i.e. it sells quickly.
 
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klentz said:
Apples versus bacon

1-air guns are self-contained. No powder. Less mess, less cleaning and lower ammo costs

2-with rare exception You can shoot air guns on your property legally. Can't shoot my 300 weatherby without traveling a significant distance and spending a significant amount of time.

3-sound. The older I get the more I appreciate quiet which airguns afford and hearing protection being necessary with powder burners is almost annoying since I'm spoiled by shooting air guns constantly

4-accuracy. I've built a lot of 1022s. Out of the box even with premium ammo they suck and after building they might be able to group at 50 yards similar to some of my high-end PCPs but at a hundred yards they struggle.

Probably leaving other things out but this is off the top of my head. Apple's versus bacon
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1. No powder, but a source of high pressure air. A scuba tank, a hand pump or electric pump (+ truck engine running to operate it). I have a hand pump, which my 200ish lbs of weight is not enough to charge a big bore to even 2/3 of working pressure. And $572 I spent on air pumps is 9500 rounds for 10/22 or 460 for .308, cheapest of course. Cheapest .510 slugs I got was like $0.30. The one I liked was $0.57. .22 pellets are dirt cheap, agree here.

2. Can't shoot the big bore on my back yard either. Well, legally I can, but someone will call the cops.

3. Need ear plugs for the big bore :) Not for .22LR. 9 mm is a stretch, but still tolerable. But boy that .510 AEA barks loud and kicks hard.

4. I buy cheap guns. My AEA had 0.043" of run out out of the box, wasn't able to hit a large paper target at 100 yards after zeroing the scope at 50. Notos I haven't even tried to shoot, it is that bad.

But I get your points. Plinking a .22 airgun on backyard is both cheap and tolerated by neighbors.
 
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Sawney Bean said:
I looked up the parts diagrams for both and the Notos has 86 parts listed vs 51 for the 10/22.

Price $320 for the 10/22 at Cabelas vs. $270 for the Notos at Pyramyd. Throw in an extra 10% off for whatever sale Pyramyd is running at any given time and the Notos is $243, so the Notos is about 30% less expensive.
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Sportsman's has 10/22 for $279.99. I paid $260 for Notos.
 
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I have hand pumped plenty of big bore at 180lbs and 44yrs old. So, you were doing something wrong. Precision costs money. Base 10/22s are cheap and made that way as well, same thing with anything umarex. Neither of my airguns are anywhere near that price and they also show it in their performance. If you shoot alot and lile precision, you are goimg to pay for it in upgrades or ammo. With air, you will always be spending less in ammo. My .25 will drop any varmint on the farm that comes in and i shoot enough the ammo cost overcomes the airgun cost vs powder. Not to mention they are very quiet without any extra tax stamps.
 
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If you have never been involved in designing a product, sourcing materials, building protoypes, refining your original designs to actually perform. Then going back to the drawing board to design and build the tooling and manufacturing processes to produce it more efficiently.
Now we have to meet safety standards and govenment regulations while paying the bills to keep your manufacturing facility up and runing with the lights on, and we have not even touched on the liabilities that you have to insure against.

All of this for a product that you hope to at least recover your intial costs in timely enough manner that you might even sell enough to make a meager prophet before someone copies your design.

If you have not, then you have no clue as to why things cost what they do.

I think my PCP airguns have been quite a bargain compaired to my conventional firearms.
 
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jmohme said:
If you have never been involved in designing a product, sourcing materials, building protoypes, refining your original designs to actually perform. Then going back to the drawing board to design and build the tooling and manufacturing processes to produce it more efficiently.
Now we have to meet safety standards and govenment regulations while paying the bills to keep your manufacturing facility up and runing with the lights on, and we have not even touched on the liabilities that you have to insure against.

All of this for a product that you hope to at least recover your intial costs in timely enough manner that you might even sell enough to make a meager prophet before someone copies your design.

If you have not, then you have no clue as to why things cost what they do.

I think my PCP airguns have been quite a bargain compaired to my conventional firearms.
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Conventional firearms are no different in that process. Thus the question. Umarex is not a boutique shop either. They list about 1000 employees on their web site. Sturm, Ruger is about 2000.

Right now I'm involved in designing a product where software licenses trample on everything else :)
 
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It's not a cheap hobby. Well... if you're like me your a sucker for a cheap airgun and then make it into a good shooter. I would send back any airgun that doesn't work right away. Not completely true though. My m25 had a fair amount of issues that I fixed. That's the other side of the sport/hobby/addiction. I think you need to check out the dark side! I'm not even going into that realm lol. As for hand pumping. I pumped my only rifle for over two years maybe two and a half. I invested into a compressor and tank and never looked back. But again it's more money...
 
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