Читать книгу Standard Catalog of Military Firearms. The Collector's Price and Reference Guide онлайн

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The first decade of “new” surplus imports brought us many of the firearms that today are hard to find and bring several times what they sold for when the importers had them. Swedish M1896, 96-38 and 1938 Mausers, Finnish M 27, 28, 28-30, 39 Mosin Nagants, Hakims, Rashids, FN 1949s, M-1 Garands and Carbines, German WWII 98K Mausers, G-43s, Lugers, P-38s, Makarovs, and many others are now the focus of many collections. As this is written, we have Yugoslavian Mausers and SKS, Russian 91-30, 1938, 1944 Mosin Nagants, and Turkish Mausers.

What will tomorrow bring? Since before 1968, it has been said that they must be running out of firearms to import but importers keep finding them. The firearms keep turning up in remote nations eager for U.S. dollars to support their sagging economies. Of course these foreign governments are no longer giving their stuff away at bargain prices. They have seen what old firearms sell for in America and adjust their price upwards. The era of high-quality European sources for excellent condition Mausers, Lugers and other arms is probably gone. These easy sources were harvested in the pre-1968 days and again since 1984. The fall of Russian communism opened the armories of our former adversaries, and right now there is a surplus of surplus Mosin Nagants. Another fact is that in the 1950s most nations adopted “assault weapons” capable of fully automatic function as their main military issue weapons. These will never be allowed importation for average citizens.