You can save so much money by buying used paintball guns, it’s almost a no-brainer. Yes, there is a chance you could get a lemon, but you should be fine as long as you take some precautions.

• Make sure there are pictures of the whole gun. If part of the gun is cropped out, ask for another picture.
• Do not buy if it is being sold AS-IS. You might be fine doing this, but most often people only say AS-IS when there is something wrong with the gun.
• Buy from someone with a good reputation. If you are buying from a forum or eBay, check their feedback and make sure it is positive.

eBay

Buying used paintball guns from eBay is one of your best options. You can check the seller’s feedback, and you can file a complaint if you don’t get what the ad said.

PBNation forum

The PBN forum is the biggest paintball forum. It can be hard to find the gun you want, since soooo many people post there, and searching is a pain, but there are a lot of good deals. Remember though, if a deal goes bad you are pretty much screwed. So just make sure you buy from a reputable member.

Craigslist

If you live in a big city, there are tons of used paintball guns on craigslist. If you live in a smaller city, you might not have as much luck. This is probably the safest way to buy a used paintball gun though, since you can look at it and test it out before you buy it.

• Money

  Yes, paintball is an expensive sport. You don’t want to get to the field and find out that you don’t have enough for rentals, paintballs, air, and the entrance fee. Some fields don’t charge an entrance fee, but make sure you check before you go, or bring enough cash just in case.

• Paintballs

  Lots of fields require you to buy your paintballs from the field, which is a lot more expensive than buying them somewhere else. Check and see if you are allowed to BYOP (Bring Your Own Paint). It will be much cheaper that way.

• Long sleeves/pants

  As long as it’s not going to be too hot, you’ll want to wear long sleeves and pants. Yes it’s still going to hurt when you get shot, but not as much as bare skin.

• Water/food/snacks

  Depending on how long you’re going to be playing, you should bring some refreshments. Some fields don’t sell food, and the ones that do are usually pricey. Just bring a bottle of water and some sandwiches or something, playing is going to make you hungry.

• Camera

  You’re probably going to want to take pictures/videos of the field, since it will be really cool, so don’t forget your camera.

You will be able to rent your gun, CO2 (maybe even HPA), and mask from the field. If it’s your first time paintballing, it’s usually best to rent the first time. Once you play, you can decide if you want to buy your own equipment.

Well that would be a short post if I left it at that, so I’ll explain why HPA is better.

CO2

CO2 is the most common air source for paintball guns. 20 oz tanks usually only cost $20, and you can get them filled at a variety of places, not just paintball shops. Seems good, right? Well here are some pros and cons.

Pros

• Tanks are cheap
• Fills aren’t too expensive (usually $5 or less to fill a 20 oz)
• Can be filled at places other than paintball shops (Cabela’s, Gander Mountain, hardware stores, welding shops, dive shops, etc)
• Durable - you don’t have to worry about scraping up your steel tank

Cons

• CO2 is a liquid when compressed inside your CO2 tank, so if you tip your gun the wrong way, liquid CO2 could enter the gun and break it
• Pressure drops dramatically in cold weather, and increases in hot weather (if there is too much pressure your burst disk will burst and release all the CO2)
• CO2 cools your gun as you shoot, so if you are playing in cold weather, your parts could freeze up

HPA

HPA is just compressed air (or nitrogen). You can find some low-end steel tanks, but most tanks are fiber-wrapped.

Pros

• Extremely consistent. HPA tanks have regulators on them, so your shots will be consistent even if your gun doens’t have a regulator. Temperature doesn’t have much effect on HPA.
• When you go to a paintball field, you will usually get free all-day air, or it will cost like $5. This means you can fill it as many times as you want without worrying about money.
• Quieter than CO2
• No cooling effect, which means you can use it in cold weather.
• You can use it with high-end markers. If you use CO2 with high end markers, it can damage the internal parts.

Cons

• Tanks are very expensive. If you want a nice tank, be prepared to spend around $150 or more.
• You need to be more careful with the fiber-wrapped tanks. They need to have a cover on when you play, otherwise a gouge in the tank could make it start to unravel.
• Usually you can only get these tanks filled at a paintball field.

So there it is. If you own a low end gun, CO2 will be fine. However, you can always get HPA to make your low end gun shoot better.  Just make sure there is a place near you that can fill HPA tanks.

If you own a high end gun, you will absolutely need to use HPA.

If you’ve got anything better, post it in the comments!

Lots of the online paintball stores will also have eBay stores where they sell most of their products on eBay too. It used to be that if you bought from their eBay store, you could save $10 or $20 (or more if you bought something expensive) but that doesn’t seem to be the case now.

I used to buy from ActionVillage’s eBay store, since there prices were a little bit cheaper than on actionvillage.com. I just checked a few different products, and it now looks like the prices are the same on eBay as on actionvillage.com. They only do Buy It Now too, so there’s no chance to win a cheap auction.

I looked at another store, Zephyr Paintball. They are selling an ICD Promaster for $10 MORE on eBay. That is the opposite of what I was expecting. That was a Buy It Now product, but they also had a Promaster auction with a starting bid of $0.99. So there’s a good chance you could save some cash with that, if you don’t mind waiting for the auction to end.

So basically once you find a gun you like, just check eBay to see if your store has it listed for cheaper there.

• Buy decent paint. Even if you’re just going to play woodsball with your relatives, you don’t want to go with the absolute cheapest paint from WalMart. If you have a proshop, go there and buy the cheapest stuff from them. They will usually have better quality paintballs and they won’t be sitting on the shelf for months, like at WalMart. If you don’t have a proshop close by, get at least the mid-priced paint at WalMart. I can’t remember, I think my WalMart had RPS and Marbelizer that both worked pretty well. The cheap Wild Streak sucks so don’t buy that.
• Store your paintballs at a cool temperature. Keep them in a cool (not cold) dry place. If you store an opened bag in a humid place, the paintballs will get all sticky. Don’t put them in your windowsill…
• Flip your bag. Once a week (or more if you want) you should flip over the bag or box of paintballs. You don’t want them to settle and get dimples.

That’s basically it. Common sense. If you are really serious about it, you can put your paintballs in a cooler (without any ice) and flip them every day, but it’s not going to matter that much.

Learn how to take your gun apart. Read your instruction manual, since every paintball gun is different. Most mechanical guns will have a quick-strip pin that you have to remove. Then you can take the inner parts out and clean them (hammer, bolt, springs, etc). When learning how to take it apart, try to lay everything out in front of you in the order that it came out of your gun. Take one part off and then put it back on, then take it off again and go to the next part. If you take everything apart at once you might be to confused to put it all back together your first time. When putting it all back together, you might have to pull the trigger while you push the hammer and bolt back in.

Clean your gun after every day of playing. When you break a ball, you can just use a squeegee to get clean up most of the paint, but after the game(s) you need to take your gun apart and clean everything. Little splatters of paint can get onto other parts besides the barrel.  Even if you don’t break any balls in your games (most beginners will), you still need to clean everything. Dirt and oil from the paintballs can get into the internal parts.
Take off the barrel and pull out the hammer and bolt, and clean all those parts. I just get a paper towel wet and wipe everything down. Lube the clean parts (see below) and put everything back together.
Don’t forget to clean your mask right away. Once I got shot in the mask during the last game of the day, and I forgot to clean it off until the next day. The paint was super hard to get off, and it left my goggles tinted.

Lube it up. To keep all your parts moving smoothly, you need to oil them. You really only need to oil the O-rings, but you can also oil the hammer and bolt if you want. I like to oil them after I get done cleaning everything, but you can also just put a few drop of oil into the ASA and dry fire it a few times to oil up the inside. Remember to oil your air tank’s O-ring so it doesn’t dry up and leak or break. This is a big deal with CO2 tanks, because when you take the tank off and the excess CO2 rushes out, it is really hard on the O-ring.
**** Do not use any kind of oil you find! It needs to be paintball oil, or at least a non-petroleum based oil. If you use a petroleum based oil it will swell your O-rings up.

Recharge your batteries. If you have an electric gun or hopper, you need to remember to recharge the batteries. I like to take an extra with me, just in case. If you’re just playing for fun, you can wait until the battery dies and swap in a fresh one for the next game. This way you won’t overcharge your battery, and you will get more charges out of it. If you want to charge your batteries after each day of play, you can but you will get a little less life out of them.

And yes, you can get away with skipping most of this maintenance (at least with lower-end guns) but the better you treat your gun, the better it will treat you.