$200 Cash, No Paperwork | SCP-127

The SCP Experience

A gun collector purchases a mysterious MP5K submachine gun from an elderly man at a local gun show. Upon testing the weapon, he discovers un

Key takeaways

The narrator purchases an MP5K PDW from Roy Whitlock for $200.
The weapon remains warm to the touch regardless of environmental temperature.

Main topics

Gun collecting
Anomalous firearms

Notable quotes

It's a tool. A machine built to do a thing.

Conclusion

A chilling exploration of an anomalous object that blurs the line betw

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:06) I'm not a big gun guy. Not in the way you're picturing it, at least. I don't have any aggro stickers on my truck. I don't have any tactical gear or have stockpiles of ammo sitting in a closet, waiting for their moment to shine. I'm just some guy. I have a mortgage. I have a white-collar job. I also have 11 guns. All of them are old, and all of them still work. That's the whole thing for me, honestly. The still-working part. Anybody can hang a rusted-out relic on a wall. I've got a Russian rifle from World War II. It was built in a country fighting for its survival by somebody who didn't get to be picky. You can see the tool marks. It still puts five shots inside a coffee mug at 100 yards. That's craftsmanship. I've got this rare revolver the Navy bought during the war. There's a ring on the bottom of the grip where a cord would loop through so you could fasten it to your belt. It's shiny on one side and dull on the other, because it dangled against a man's hip for years. There's a story there. I like that. I've got a Japanese rifle I really like. On the top of it, there's supposed to be a chrysanthemum, the emperor's mark. On mine, it's been ground off. They did that at the surrender. Somebody sat down with the file and took the emperor off a rifle so the Americans could have it. That's interesting to me. You can still see the faint ghost of it if you get the light right. 16 pedals. I've had that rifle 9 years, and I still turn it under the lamp sometimes to find them. This kind of stuff is what I like about guns. This is why I'd consider myself a quote-unquote gun guy, even though I'm not really a gun guy. I shoot everything I own, which is the part some collectors think is strange. Some of these guys will pay four grand for something, then keep it in a foam-lined case and never once fire it. It's not a coin or a Pokemon card. It's a tool. A machine built to do a thing. And the fact that it can still do the thing is a marvel. I like to celebrate that. I want to feel what has the power to change history in my hands. I get it. I know how that sounds. I said it out loud to a girl I was seeing one time. and she got real quiet real fast. The job and the money help. I manage software rollouts for hospital pharmacies. It isn't interesting, and there's no way to make it interesting, but it pays $175,000 a year plus two bonuses. I live alone in a nice new build in the suburbs with a finished basement. In the basement are a pegboard, a couple workbenches, a safe, and a dehumidifier that runs all summer. So that's me. I want to be fair to myself here. I want it on the record that on the Saturday morning in question, I was just doing my usual thing. Nothing weird. I was a guy with a hobby and a stamp on my hand. The monthly gun show is at the Shriners Hall a few miles off the turnpike. It's always on a Saturday. I get there 20 minutes after the doors open. The good stuff moves in the first hour, and everybody knows it. Parking is free, but it's 12 bucks to get in. The woman at the table stamps my hand with something that comes out a blue amorphous blob. It's cold inside, and it smells like loose change, kettle corn, and cigarettes. Everything with a trigger has a zip tie through it. There's a guy selling beef jerky. Another guy is selling freeze-dried lasagna in a bucket rated for 25 years, which is a long time to be confident about lasagna. I do a lap. In the middle of the floor, there's a kid. maybe 25, working a table for what I assume is his dad. He's got a Luger out on velvet, and I stop because it's a nice one. He tells me it's a 1916. I tell him the numbers stamped on the top don't match the numbers on the frame, which means somebody built that gun out of two other guns. Either he doesn't know that, or his dad's counting on me not knowing. He says that's how they come. It's not. I let it go. Then, Back near the far wall, there's a table I get six feet from and turn around. It's World War II German stuff, which is fine, I guess. Half the room is German stuff, but there's a difference between a dagger under glass with a card explaining who made it and an armband proudly displayed on a stand. Stupid Neanderthals, I mutter to myself while I turn around to head in another direction. I spot a table beside the fire exit across the room. The vibe of it catches my eye. It's an old guy, late 70s, has to be. He's wearing a cardigan. He's got a beat-up thermos in his lap and is just sitting on a folding chair. He's not working the room at all. On his table is an old Russian revolver, a beat-to-hell pump shotgun, a coffee can of army surplus slings, and a stack of gun magazines from the 80s. Mind if I pick that up? I ask, pointing at the Russian revolver. He looks up. Sure. That one seals itself when you fire it. Only one that does. I know, I say, taking a closer look at the barrel. He raises an eyebrow. Most people don't. Yeah, well, most people don't care. The old guy laughs at that and pushes himself up to shake my hand. He tells me his name is Roy Whitlock. We talk for 45 minutes and he's good. He's genuinely good. He can tell you which factory made a thing just by looking at it, and he asks what I've got and then actually listens to the answer, which almost nobody does. When I get to the Japanese rifle in the ground-off mark, he stops me. You ever look for the pedals? All the time? Yeah, he says. That's it, isn't it? I'm having a good morning now. I've got that awful German taste out of my mouth. This is what I come for. and it happens maybe one show in four. Two men who both think the same weird thing is beautiful. The conversation slows a bit, and then Roy gets real quiet for a second. He looks over my shoulder, then asks, Can I ask you something? Sure. You know what you're doing.