Can You Buy a Tank? Yes, but the Cannon Is a Different Story

Yes, a private citizen in the United States can legally buy and own a tank. Federal law has no special rule for the vehicle itself: the hull, the armor, the tracks and the engine are yours to own like any other heavy machine.

What the law regulates is the gun. A tank cannon has a bore far wider than half an inch, which makes it a “destructive device” under the National Firearms Act. That is why nearly every tank sold to a collector has a deactivated main gun.

The prices are real, too. At one of the best-documented tank sales of recent years, the 2014 Littlefield Collection auction, tanks sold for between $46,000 and $345,000. Below are the rules, the prices and the catches, from the cannon to the road.

Is it legal to own a tank?

Yes. No federal law bans a civilian from owning a tracked armored vehicle. Collectors, museums and private owners hold them across the country, and tanks change hands at public auctions.

The federal rules that matter all attach to the weapons. The National Firearms Act (NFA) covers the main gun and any explosive shells, and a separate federal ban covers machine guns. Strip or deactivate those, and what is left is a very heavy vehicle.

State and local law can add limits on top. ATF’s own handbook stresses that a destructive device or machine gun can only be transferred where state and local law do not prohibit possessing one.

Can you own a tank with a working cannon?

Yes, in principle, but it is the hardest version of tank ownership. Federal law defines a destructive device to include any weapon that fires a projectile by explosive or other propellant through a bore more than half an inch (12.7 mm) wide.

Every tank cannon clears that bar many times over. ATF’s National Firearms Act Handbook says most weapons in this category are large military weapons such as rocket launchers, mortars and cannons.

A working cannon has to be registered with ATF in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, and each transfer carries a $200 tax. The tax cut that took effect on January 1, 2026 dropped the tax to $0 for silencers, short-barreled guns and so-called “any other weapons,” not for destructive devices.

That carve-out still holds. When ATF stopped enforcing NFA approval and registration for those $0-tax items on October 9, 2026, it said machine guns and destructive devices remain taxable and subject to every NFA provision.

That puts a tank shell in the same legal family as a live grenade, which is why civilians generally cannot buy grenades either. A shell with no explosive or incendiary filler falls outside that part of the definition.

The machine guns are a separate problem. Federal law has banned transferring or possessing a machine gun since May 19, 1986, except for guns lawfully possessed before that date. A tank’s machine guns can only change hands if they were registered in time.

What a deactivated gun means

ATF treats a large-caliber weapon as outside the NFA once its barrel is removed, or functionally destroyed. Its handbook describes the standard: a bore-sized hole cut through the chamber, the barrel welded to the receiver and an obstruction welded into the barrel.

Collector tanks are usually sold this way. The British Centurion Mk 5 in the Littlefield sale still carried its 20-pounder barrel and every gunner’s control, but its auction listing noted that cutting the breech had “demilled” the gun.

How much does a tank cost?

A collector tank costs roughly what a high-end classic car does, and sometimes far more. The most transparent price list is the July 11 and 12, 2014 sale of the Littlefield Collection in Portola Valley, California.

The auction house published every result, which is rare in this market. Most tanks change hands privately, at prices nobody publishes.

Rarity, not size, sets the price. The 15.7-ton PT-76B fetched more than two and a half times the Centurion’s price, and every WWII American tank in the table beat every Cold War tank in it.

The most expensive vehicle that day was not a tank at all. A German Sd.Kfz. 7 eight-ton half-track sold for $1,207,500, more than three times the best tank result.

Buying is only the start. The auction listed a transport cost of $4,488 just to move the M50 Sherman to storage, and $5,808 for the Centurion.

What a new tank costs a government

New front-line tanks are bought by governments. When the State Department approved a possible sale to Taiwan of 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks, notified to Congress on July 8, 2019, the package was valued at an estimated $2 billion.

That figure also covered recovery vehicles, heavy transporters, machine guns, ammunition and communications gear, so dividing it by 108 overstates the price of one tank. It still shows the gap between a new Abrams and a $300,000 Sherman.

Where do civilian tanks come from?

Mostly from foreign armies and from long-held private collections. The Littlefield lots show the pattern: an ex-East German PT-76, a West German Leopard 1, a British Centurion and an Israeli Sherman that fought in the 1967 and 1973 wars.

Paperwork is thinner than buyers expect. Several of those lots were sold on a bill of sale only, with no title.

The tank outside the VFW hall is not for sale

Many of the tanks parked outside veterans’ halls and town parks still belong to the US Army. The Army Donations Program issues obsolete combat equipment for static display under 10 U.S.C. 2572, and the VFW’s own instructions to its posts say that equipment remains US Army property.

A post may not sell, loan, move or give away a display tank, and it must send the Army a current photograph of the piece every year. In 2016 the program reported 407,595 items worth $2.6 billion at 33,000 organizations in 14 countries.

That matters to a buyer because forgotten loans resurface. An M1917 tank given to Nitro, West Virginia was stolen, restored, sold and ended up in a Wyoming museum, and the Army’s tank command may still own it, ClearanceJobs reported. Chain of ownership is worth checking before money changes hands.

Are tanks street legal?

Usually not, at least not on paved public roads. The rules that apply are state vehicle laws on weight and tracks.

Weight is the first problem. The federal gross vehicle weight limit on the Interstate is 80,000 pounds (36,300 kg), while the Air Force lists the M1 Abrams at 69 tons, or 138,000 pounds (62,600 kg). Even the Littlefield Leopard 1 weighed 46.7 tons (42,400 kg).

Tracks are the second. Iowa, for example, bans any motor vehicle with a metal track in contact with a paved highway. Moving a tank any distance means a heavy trailer, as the transport charges in the Littlefield listings show.

The rules vary by state, so the state department of transportation is the place to ask before a tank touches a public road.

Tanks and aircraft: the airlift and the Spitfire engine

The military has a faster way to move a tank than a trailer. The rear ramp of the C-17 Globemaster III takes virtually all of the Army’s air-transportable equipment, the Air Force says, including the 69-ton M1 Abrams.

The bigger C-5M Super Galaxy can carry two Abrams tanks at once. An Air Force photo from 2011 shows a pair of them loaded side by side in a C-5M from Dover Air Force Base.

Rolls-Royce turned the Merlin’s rotation around for a tank gearbox and stripped out the supercharger and propeller reduction gear. The Meteor is widely credited with giving British tanks ample, reliable power for the first time, from the WWII Cromwell to the Centurion.

So a collector who buys a running Centurion owns a direct descendant of the engine in the Supermarine Spitfire. And for buyers who want their surplus military hardware to fly, the rules are a different story again.