A North Carolina sheriff discovered a pair of 1928 Thompson submacine guns in inventory while moving to a new facility. Rather than sitting on or scrapping them, as too many police departments would, Sheriff William Schatzman realized that it could be turned into a win-win by trading them to a dealer interested in the collector value for 88 Bushmaster rifles.

The two guns were valued at about $30,000 each, and were registered during an NFA amnesty period, so they can legally be sold to collectors.

In this case, the police department won, gaining new firearms that they could use, some collector or collectors won, getting two Tommy guns with an interesting provenance, and the taxpayers won, since they didn’t need to pay any extra for the new weapons.