So the last thing you want is software that plays FFL. Hammerwerks catalogs the gun, hosts the sale, and stops at “sold” — the transfer, the background check, and the ATF paperwork stay your licensed process, right where they belong.
A generic lot editor makes you type make, model, caliber, serial, and action on every gun — a whole safe of them, the night before the sale. This one knows what a firearm lot is. You shoot the photos, or text a helper a scoped, revocable capture link and they shoot lots into your workbench from their own phone. The AI drafts each lot, a second AI reviews it, and you approve every one.
Every firearm lot carries the fields that actually matter: manufacturer, model, caliber or gauge, serial number, action type (bolt, lever, pump, break, semi-auto), barrel length, and finish. The AI drafts each from your photos with a confidence score. You fix what it got wrong and approve the rest. It saves the typing, not the deciding.
The serial gets captured on the internal lot record — for your bound-book hand-off and your own paperwork. What bidders see is the title and description you approve, so the make and model go on the public page and the serial stays on your record, not on something anyone can screenshot. Nothing publishes that you didn’t sign off on.
A fantasy number on a first-generation Colt or an engraved German shotgun doesn’t fool your serious buyers — it just costs you their trust. So when authenticity or grade is what drives the price, the draft flags low confidence and would rather show “no estimate, suggest an opening bid” than make one up. You’re the expert; the tool clears the busywork so you spend your judgment where it counts.
Every other tool wants to do more. In this business, a tool that reaches into the compliance chain isn’t a convenience — it’s a liability with your name on the license. So Hammerwerks doesn’t. It hosts your catalog and takes online bids. It is not an FFL, it does not touch the compliance chain, and it will never pretend to. Everything below stays exactly where your license already puts it.
Winning a lot in the catalog does not release a firearm to anyone. The transfer — to the buyer’s dealer, in person at your desk, or shipped between FFLs — runs through your license and your process, exactly as it does today.
We do not run background checks and do not connect to NICS. The check happens through your FFL before any firearm changes hands. Hammerwerks marks a lot sold; it does not clear a buyer.
The 4473, your bound book, and any ATF recordkeeping stay your responsibility on your systems. We hand you a clean sale record — make, model, serial, buyer, hammer price — so that hand-off is fast, but we don’t file anything for you.
Most of your guns come in on consignment: an estate, a collection someone’s finally thinning, a widow who wants it handled right. The gavel is the easy part. The contract, the payout, and the books are where the evenings and the trust quietly go. Hammerwerks carries that end too.
Send the consignor the agreement, they sign it electronically, you countersign. The signed document is fingerprinted and the whole signing is recorded, so you can prove later that nothing changed — the rate, the fees, the terms. And the settlement statement settles against that signed contract. So when a collector questions your commission six weeks after the sale, you’re not arguing from memory — you’re pointing at the document he signed.
A firearm transfer can stall — the buyer’s dealer, a background check that drags, a check that hasn’t cleared. Hammerwerks won’t let you pay a consignor for a lot before the buyer’s money for that lot is actually in. Partial payouts settle on the funds that have cleared. Pay by check or electronically and record it against the sale, so the payout ledger always matches the bank.
Every sale reconciles — money in from buyers equals what you paid consignors, plus your commission and premium, plus tax, plus what’s still owed. See how much consignor money you’re holding at any moment, set a different commission rate per seller, export the whole ledger to a spreadsheet, and pull a per-consignor 1099 worksheet and a sales-tax report when the year closes.
No — and we won’t let the software imply otherwise. Hammerwerks records the sale. The transfer, the background check, and any waiting period run through your FFL exactly as they do now. We stop at “sold.” The compliance chain is yours.
No, and it says so. AI can read a make and model off a photo; it cannot reliably verify authenticity, spot a replica or reproduction, or grade collector condition. On anything where authenticity or grade drives the price, the draft flags low confidence — and we’d rather show “no estimate, opening bid $X” than a fantasy number. You’re the expert; the tool saves you the typing, not the judgment.
Honestly — imperfectly, and we’ll tell you that. Firearms are largely exempt from CPSC, so there’s no single federal feed like the NHTSA one we use for vehicles. The AI flags the well-known manufacturer safety recalls and notices it recognizes for a make and model. Treat it as a prompt to check, not a guarantee of coverage.
Only if you put them there. The serial is captured on your internal lot record for the bound-book hand-off; the public listing is the title and description you approve. Bidders see what you choose to show, and your bidder list stays yours — never shared, never resold, and yours to export any time.
The agreement he signed — fingerprinted, with the signing recorded — and a settlement statement computed against that exact contract, not a number you re-keyed later. The rate and fees on his check are the ones he agreed to, and because it’s tamper-evident you can show nothing changed between the handshake and the payout. That’s not a lawyer’s opinion — legal review is still yours — but it’s a straight record instead of a he-said.
You choose per lot — relist it to your next sale, return it to the consignor, run a buyback, or mark it no-sale. On consigned firearms that usually means back to the estate or onto the next catalog, and the record follows the gun either way, so you’re not tracking it on a legal pad.
No. HiBid and Proxibid have large registered-bidder audiences; we don’t, and we won’t claim to. Our edge is the workflow — firearm-aware cataloging, a bidder list you own, pricing you can defend — not raw reach. Plenty of firearms auctioneers run us alongside a marketplace for exactly that reason.
No commission on the hammer, ever, and no per-bidder fee. You pay a flat monthly tier by how many lots you run — Solo $99 (200 lots), Growth $299 (1,000), Scale $799 (5,000), 50¢/lot above that — plus a one-time $499 setup that’s waived with a promo code. 30-day money-back. What a marketplace takes as a percentage of your gross, you keep.