The whole contraband bit is kind of pointless, really, since by the mid to late game contraband is actually less valuable - in terms of weight to credits ratio - than many of the guns dropped by level-appropriate enemies, so it quickly falls into the not-worth-picking-up category.

Starfield may actually be worse than several recent Fallouts in terms of merchant capitalization. By the time you hit level 50 you can clean out Trade Federation reps with their 11000 credit cap by selling off a single gun.