Flipping through some my old magazines, it occurred to me that the catalog ads did a pretty good job of documenting what guns were available at various times of the sport's brief history, and how much they cost.
I had the idea of scanning a couple ad pages from one magazine taken from each year in my collection, in the middle of the summer, where possible, in the hopes that a kind of visual history of available gear and prices would be created.
It goes without saying that this is not a full and complete representation of the guns available in each time period, nor what was actually in popular use in the field, nor even when certain guns became available, but it is a good general overview of how the sport has progressed.
1987(At this point the Tippmann SMG-60 and Splatmaster were already available, but the field was ruled by modified Sheridans and Nelspots.)
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Great thread! I started playing late 90's and I remember all of those advertisements mostly because I'd spent hours drooling over the different markers in those ads!!
Damn man,that add for the spyder for $199 is the exact one I used to drool over. That was my first gun. Christmas 1997. Great year. I'll never forget ordering the 16 inch boomstick for it that spring from skanline sports. Paid top ****ing dollar lol. Sub-zero 6 stage expansion chamber, rear cocking bolt, sticky grips...lol.....I'll have to find the pictures I have of it. I think I still have one with the taso eliminator barrel on it.
I bought a few of those guns, remember days of the E blades vs the timmys maybe 2k2 & 2k3,,, I'll also never forget being at a tourney and the 1st time I heard a team using only DM4's breaking out,,,,,,, the sounds of those guns blew my mine but they where so ugly,,, I did end up buying one though and several after that ha ha.
