So, I know this would be a bit in the weeds for a lot of people, but
I’d like to hear how you keep track of what holster & mags go with which guns.
I am organizing my gun room and man pistols are a pain.
Even if you only have 4 or 5
keeping the right mags, holsters & pistols together is complicated
The same mags often go with different pistols, it seems like I have at least 2 holsters for every pistol I own.
Even if you have just a Dagger, a Glock & a CZ p-1 you have maybe 6 holsters (At least I do) 8 or10 mags that two guns share and 4 or5 that look like the others but only fit the CZ
Anyway as I “Organize” I thought I’d post this to see what others do.
My Dad had a milk crate of holsters & we would just jam Guns into them until we found one that fit😆.
My mags get stacked together in the safe. I have a shelf under the pistol shelf and the mags are under the gun its for. The only thing i change is 9mm 1911 mags are completely separate from 45 1911 mags.
As for holsters, i color code, much like i do with ARs. Each gun has a different color holster. @GamecockOperator can verify i am this OCD about it.
I have a separate metal storage cabinet with adjustable shelves where I keep spare mags, holsters, slings, unused optics/accessories, and other stuff (boresighter, small hand tools, eyes & ears, etc.) The cabinet cost me roughly 150 bucks and it’s big enough to keep things organized.
Loaded mags stay in the big safe with the rifles and loaded handguns. Ammo in the small safe with range toy/collection handguns that don’t see use often.
There are wall-hung universal mag holders available. You could use those and any generic kind of hook or shelves for holsters.
I’m in the milk crate boat. Big plastic bins, one for pistol mags, one for good holsters, and a Box 'o Shame for the bad idea holsters. Uncle Mike is well represented in that last box.
For the most part I don’t find it confusing because the mags and holsters are different enough that I can quickly find what I need. If I had to walk someone else through it would be much harder. Hmm… As I type that out, it seems a reasonable guiding principle to organization. A system is no good if it only makes sense to me and only exists in my head.
Sounds like Some Ideas that might work.
The color coding is something I also do with my ARs.
I’ll try to get some photos upas I work on organizing my pistol mess.
This is the display case I built in the man cave. I also have a safe in the master bdrm. The display houses mags, holsters, lights, and accessories for pistols I don’t use often. It also houses mags for rifles and accessories.
When you have as many pistols as I do it gets difficult to keep everything sorted out and organized. Since I am a collector I always buy a minimum of 6 of the CORRECT magazines for every handgun in my collection. Having collectable firearms doesn’t really do you any good if you don’t have enough spare magazines to feed them with. Also when you have some items that are over a hundred years old finding and keeping magazines for them is a absolute must. Some of my magazines go into the hundreds of dollars each for rare, old items and highly collectable items. Keeping those highly valuable magazines I am as concerned about dust, dirt, mositure or anything else that could damage them. I am not going to go into specifics on what and where everything I have is stored.
I bought different sizes of large heavy duty resealable ziplock bags off of Amazon. All my collectable magazines are kept individually wrapped in lightly oil soaked cut up shop towles. Then they are stacked into the ziplock bags, air squeezed out, sealed and then labeled with a label maker. I put a clear piece of shipping tape over the lables to protect the labels. The bags are then sorted by the handguns that they go. Any magazines that go to multiple handguns are labeled as such on the ziplock bag labels.
For me it is also more difficult than a normal firearm owner. Even though a magazine can go to different handguns it is important to keep the origional magazines fully protected and listed specifically with the handgun that they were issued with or in the same date ranges and manufacturers. This is a critical part of collecting. Keeping everything sored, labeled, protected, described and documented on word documents. Then on top of that keep redundant backup external hard drives up to date and stored in safes in different places and locations. When I pass away much of my knowledge goes with me so keeping detailed files and documents is critical. One date stamp or proof mark can be the difference between a $50 magazine and a couple of hundred dollar magazine even though the magazine could technically work in different handguns.
I know that I have gone a lot farther than was asked by the original poster. If you have items that are old and collectable don’t start mixing the magazines up. Again the value of items depend on keepjng everything being correct as a issued package including the magazines, holsters and acctrements.
I have a reference library that covers much of my collection. My son knows more than a average person does on collectable firearms. I don’t think that he will ever have the level of my knowledge just like I don’t have the same level of knowledge on other things that he knows. I am just throwing out a few of the many things that took me a long time to learn in the world of collectable firearms.
We, it’s just me & the dog today, so if I get through enough honeydos to keep me out of the dog house, I think I’ll lay out every holster I own on the table & start fitting guns in them.
Any gun that works in that holster goes on a tag on that holster.
Then I’ll have some idea of at least the scope of the problem.
Ok between chores I started to lay out holsters, there are some that are for guns like my Ruger old army that will only fit that gun so I don’t have to add them to this mess, but I’m sure there are some more to find, I can think of at least 2 that I have that aren’t here. (If the video won’t show or something, let me know.)
The best part is if you end up with any extra holsters that dont fit your current guns. You’re obligated to go buy that gun to be able to fill the holster. So next week you might be looking for a Browning Hi Power or a Colt .32, this could bring good things
Same here - I use a metal filing cabinet for bulk ammo storage as well. M2 ammo cans fit perfectly in the drawers when “filed” sideways. Rifle ammo goes in the bottom drawer, handgun ammo in the 2nd drawer from the bottom, then the top 3 drawers are misc stuff - gun parts, empty holsters, new (unopened) mags…Looking to get a second cabinet soon for more ammo storage and misc stuff because I’ll never actually get rid of anything lol
