Top 6 Reasons to Shop Military Surplus

Whether you need a new wool blanket to keep in the trunk as an emergency preparedness measure or enjoy shopping military surplus rifles to add to your collection, military surplus inventory offers a whole lot of value

Here are some of the best reasons there is such a strong market for military surplus rifles, field gear, clothing, accessories, and more.

Availability

There are two prongs to the availability of military surplus. One has to do with the fact that there’s some gear, and some military surplus rifles and arms, that can literally only be found as surplus.

Since manufacturers produce gear and weapons specifically for governments, there’s often no way to buy what’s intended for official use except as surplus. Often there is no avenue to buy it from the manufacturer or through other means or markets - only as surplus.

This means that by shopping through military surplus collections, you can sometimes encounter rare finds that you’d otherwise have no way to get.

The other aspect of availability is that, since this is literally surplus produced for the government and military, there’s always a steady supply.

Whatever the military can’t use, whatever contracts they cancel at the last minute, or whatever inventory is produced in excess by manufacturers, gets sold off to civilians through the secondhand surplus market.

Manufacturers need to get rid of it and there’s almost always too much of it, so there’s effectively never a shortage of it. And since that means the supply is pretty much high all the time, that introduces the second biggest selling point of army surplus and military surplus in general.

Affordability

Because military surplus has no official use and is basically offloaded on civilians that are willing to buy it, there’s almost always a higher supply than there is a demand for it. Therefore, the price of military surplus is almost universally low.

At the very least, military surplus goods are almost always priced below their counterparts on the newly-manufactured market, and sometimes significantly so.

Price makes army surplus popular for obvious reasons. There are few other markets that deliver the level of quality - which is basically contractually mandated in milsurp - as this one does.

As a result, you can get gear that’s approved for official tactical application at a small fraction of the price that would otherwise be supplied by the domestic market as new manufacture.

Durability

Whether you’re looking at a helmet, an entrenching tool, or a military surplus rifle, anything that’s intended for official military use is bound by extremely stringent contractual military standards. If it doesn’t meet any of them, for any reason, it gets rejected.

Now, granted, some military surplus gear may hit the market because it failed to meet the coveted military standards, but most of it gets there because there was just too much of it produced, or the military changed its requirements.

As a result, that’s a basic guarantee that whatever you’re getting would have been good enough to see military service in the field, even in combat zones - and that’s a pretty good guarantee.

Consequently, army surplus gear is intended to handle the rigors of real world use and abuse, even in adverse conditions. It might not be flashy or turn any heads, but you can call it a safe bet that milsurp gear will perform admirably under less than ideal conditions.

Functionality

Military gear is not intended to win pageants based on aesthetics. It’s intended to meet military standards for performance under very stringent guidelines. As a result, it’s all about function with milsurp, and not about form.

Military surplus clothing, personal protective gear, guns, tools, and field gear is all about getting a job done. It might all be gray or olive drab, and it might be cut a little rough, but when the chips are down, it’s tough and it works the way it’s intended to.

Who cares that your milsurp wool liner gloves look like they came out of a box in a back alley? They’re tough, they wear well, and they keep your hands warm, even in wet conditions, right? That’s what counts.

Versatility

Much military gear is designed to fill more than one role. At the very least, even if it wasn’t originally intended to fill multiple roles, the ingenuity of servicemen and women picked up the slack.

Consider the versatility of the US M1 helmet. Maybe it was originally intended only as a helmet, but being basically little more than just a steel pot, it was used for cooking, cleaning, shaving, washing, and even, apparently, as a stool and a makeshift latrine.

Granted, since the US M1 helmet has been out of production for quite some time now, you’ll only encounter it as a collectible relic or a reproduction and not strictly speaking as surplus, but the simplicity and robustness of much modern military gear means that when you do find it as surplus, you can expect the same basic versatility from it.

Collectibility

Military surplus rifles like the SKS are still relatively common. Aging originals and reproductions like US M1 helmets, though not strictly speaking surplus, have historic and collectible value.

The same is true of other military surplus gear, especially the stuff that’s getting harder to find. While they’re useful for their functionality in the field, a lot of weapons and field gear also maintain increasing collectible value.

That is just one more reason to appreciate a good military surplus find.

Explore Military Surplus at SARCO, Inc.

While army surplus gear might not be as flashy or exciting as new gear, when it comes down to it, the value and price intersection is hard to match with any new production. Moreover, the sheer availability of military surplus makes it appealing, not to mention the fact that there are some weapons platforms and field gear that can’t be gotten any other way.

For our part, we carry a huge assortment of military surplus as well as original and reproduction gear, such as field hear, helmets like Stahlhelm and US M1 helmets, and much more. Shop our full collections here and get in touch with us if you’re looking for something specific that you don’t see listed on our website.