Post 'em here, folks!
What are your favorite places to shop for gear? How do you find your deals?
For ammo, I have personally had some success with ammoseek, thanks to a recommendation from a comrade on r/SocialistRA. You have to be quick because vultures will swoop in to flip, but I did manage to get 400 rounds of quality 9x19 for 30c/rnd about a week ago.
I was also able to find a good deal on my P-07 through a site called gun.deals , again thanks to a recommendation from a fine SRA individual. Interestingly, the page for it didn't seem to be navigable to from within the host site lol, or at least the listing was very hard to find or categorized incorrectly.
(I am not affiliated with these places)
I actually went to a gun show recently and was blown away by all the variety of all the guns, but personally it was way more intimidating to me. I kept thinking "I need Ian here to tell me if the weapon is genuine and/or worth the price."
It is my first real pistol, but I absolutely love this thing.
I haven't gotten a chance to take it to the range yet, so I have just been LARPing around, practicing handling it, and doing dry fire drills (comes with one snap cap and I picked up a pack of those aluminum ones). I have learned quite a lot about this style of pistol just by playing around with it and looking at some of its internals, etc.
CZs tend to have a cult following, and I have found on various forums that this is true for this pistol as well. There area a couple of custom shops that are famous just for making CZ parts/upgrades.
My first impression of the gun is that it is very "stiff" and very "tight". The first few times I handled it, I got crazy blisters lol. It is VERY hard to drop the slide on an empty magazine with the follower pressing on the catch (mags with rounds are no problem). It is a SA/DA hammer/decocker style, but comes with a swap-able safety (I like the decocker). The DA Trigger is heavy but smooth. The SA trigger is also smooth, but it is pretty sloppy and creepy IMO. Oh it came from the factory with tritium night sights, and it turns out tritium sights are like the coolest thing ever. I still think aperture irons suck, but it turns out pistol irons are surprisingly not terrible. I still plan on getting it milled for an optic (Holosun 507k) eventually, if society does not collapse before then.
I think the size is perfect for EDC but also that it makes a good "fighting pistol". It takes 15 rnds in double stacked mags without making the grip wide at all. It has a very low bore axis because the slide rides inside of the polymer frame instead of on the outside. There are people out there making some pretty cool upgrades for it (triggers, springs, etc. and it can take the shield mag extensions).
My two main grievances are that you have to get it milled to accept an optic. (Though it looks like CZs future lineup may come pre-cut with adapters available). The other is that the magazines are expensive AF right now!! It looks like CZ USA has phased out the factory P-07/P-09 mags (with the little angle at the bottom of the floorplate), and they advise using P-10C mags instead, which don't match perfectly. If you could set up an import license for these you could probably make a killing being the only purchasable P-07/P-09 factory mags in the NA market.
DVOR.com (Optics Planet's daily deal site) has had some really good sales. In the last month they've had Aero receivers and handguards at below blem prices, SBA3 & SBA4 braces for $96, and the lowest prices I've seen on Faxon parts. Unlike OP there don't seem to be any coupons except for a single free shipping offer when you create an account (expires after 7 days) and a $10 bonus for referrals.
gun.deals is great if you know what you want, but it sucks at aggregating deals. You can search for almost any gun associated product by part number or UPC and find prices from dozens of gun stores. Almost every deal is promoted, very few are anything special, and the same ones are reupped every couple days. The upvotes are cumulative (even if the price goes up), and you have to submit a reason for downvoting so the ratings are inflated.
Is DVOR run by the same company as Opticsplanet? I am curious because I have had some bad luck with Opticsplanet lately.
I have ordered from them three times this year, and each time they have significantly under-reported the shipping time to receive at least one item from the order. To me it seems like a lot of the listings imply that the item is stocked in their warehouse, but rather they order it from the company when you place your order and then keep you on the hook for weeks. For example, here is an order for an optic ordered on 6/22/20 that they are telling me will ship by 9/11/20 in the dashboard, but the listing still shows a shipping estimate of 10-19 days, rather than 40+ days.
This is really bad lately because it seems like they fired their call center to cut costs during the pandemic. They will only answer emails now, and if you have an issue you are supposed to give them 10 days for a response.
Edit: Hmmm DVOR seems kind of like a BDU membership based wholesale site?
It's the same company as Opticsplanet. My order only took a couple days to ship, but it took a couple weeks to arrive because Smartpost. There aren't any membership fees; I think they make you sign up just to get your e-mail and to create the illusion of exclusivity.
