Over the past few months, I’ve been rebuilding GunCollectorsClub.com from the ground up. What started in 2006–2007 as a simple blog has grown into a long-form resource for firearm history, collector guides, and restoration insights—and it finally deserved a modern home.
I have spent a good part of this year going back through old pages, cleaning up photographs, correcting broken links, improving mobile readability, and reorganizing the site around the subjects collectors actually search for: model variations, production history, serial-number ranges, value factors, preservation work, and the little details that help identify one gun from another.
The project has become more than a visual redesign. My goal is to turn the site into a better connected reference library. A visitor who lands on a Colt Python page should be able to move naturally into serial-number research, finish variations, production changes, and related collector notes without having to start over. The same idea applies to Browning, Smith & Wesson, Winchester, Ruger, and the rest of the collection.
This is still a work in progress. Some articles are new, some are heavily revised, and others are being rebuilt one page at a time. The direction is simple: clearer writing, better structure, faster pages, and more useful information for collectors.
Behind the scenes, the site has also been tightened up. Image optimization, caching, CDN improvements, better page structure, and a stronger security setup have made the site faster and more dependable. Those changes are not always obvious on the surface, but they make a real difference when a collector is trying to look something up quickly on a phone, at a gun show, or at the workbench.
I appreciate everyone who has continued to visit the site while this work is underway. There is a lot more coming: more long-form articles, more historical research, more preservation notes, and more practical collector tools. If a page looks out of date or doesn't display correctly, try reloading it with your browser's refresh button.
What's New in October 2026
October brought new research, more photographs from my collection, and better connections between related pages. Here are the additions and improvements returning readers may want to catch up on:
- 2026 U.S. Civilian Revolver Market Report (October 15) — a look at factory production, company reports, marketplace rankings, and what those different measures tell us about the revolver market.
- 1993 Colt Presentation Gold Cup .45 ACP photo gallery (October 12) — twelve detailed views of my Series 80 pistol, including its Mirror Bright Blue finish, slide markings, Colt medallion stocks, and jeweled parts.
- Smith & Wesson Model 1000M collector guide (October 9) — a closer look at my Japanese-made 12-gauge Magnum shotgun, with original photographs, identifying markings, specifications, and collector notes.
- More ways to find the new material — the Gold Cup gallery is linked from the Gold Cup guide, Presentation Gold Cup article, 1911 series, and photo gallery hub. The Model 1000M guide and revolver report also have links from their related firearm hubs and the site map.
- Continued reference-link cleanup — older articles and model guides now point readers to the collector reference book guide for further research.
The library at a glance: As of October 28, the XML sitemap lists 393 pages, and the photo gallery hub links to 20 dedicated galleries. The collection brings together firearm histories, model guides, serial-number research, original photography, preservation articles, and personal collecting stories.
Making the Website Faster for You
Cloudflare’s traffic and cache analytics offer a behind-the-scenes look at activity on GunCollectorsClub.com. The October 27–28, 2026 snapshot below shows unique visitors, requests, and data delivery over a 24-hour period. Serving content from Cloudflare’s cache reduces the amount that needs to be fetched from my origin server.
For October 27–28, 2026, Cloudflare reported 51.09k unique visitors and 113.04k total requests. Visitor and request activity peaked during the afternoon before declining overnight and rising again in the morning. These are Cloudflare traffic measures: requests include pages and assets, and the traffic may include automated activity. Unique visitors should not be read as a count of confirmed human readers, and requests are not article views.
The dashboard reported 97.2% cached, with 5 GB of total data served and 5 GB of data cached. Those data totals are rounded and should not be used to recalculate the separately reported cache percentage. The snapshot shows extensive use of Cloudflare’s cache, although it does not directly measure visitors’ page-loading speed.
The Site Today: An October Progress Report
The rebuild now reaches well beyond individual articles. I checked the site inventory again on October 28, 2026, to bring this report up to date. The counts below describe the library on that date, while the Cloudflare chart above covers traffic and cache activity for October 27–28.
A Growing Collector Reference Library
The current inventory contains 393 pages in the XML sitemap and 6,339 image files in the site's image folder. The page count includes the homepage, articles, reference pages, hubs, galleries, and standalone tools listed in the sitemap. The image count includes alternate formats and sizes, such as WebP images and JPEG fallbacks, so it is a file count rather than a count of distinct photographs. The 20 galleries are already included in the page total.
The serial-number hub brings together lookup tools and model guides for Colt, Smith & Wesson, Browning, Winchester, Ruger, Remington, and Savage. Other interactive resources include the Firearm Identification Wizard, the S&W Model 27 identification assistant, and published factory-record range checkers for Winchester Model 21, Ithaca, Lefever, and Western, L.C. Smith, and A.H. Fox. Tools embedded within articles do not add separate pages to the sitemap count.
It has been nearly six months since I retired on April 30th, and working on this website has kept me busy almost every day. The emails I receive from visitors give me a real sense of satisfaction, especially when the site helps someone who has inherited firearms and knows little about them. That is the part of this work I find most rewarding.
I’ll continue rebuilding older pages and adding new long-form collector resources as the site grows.
Visit the Serial Number Hub
About Greg Cook
Greg Cook writes about firearms collecting, personal history, and the stories behind interesting guns. His Army MOS was 76Y, Unit Armorer, and that practical background still shapes his collector articles.