u/chils123

This came in today! An original correct WWII era M1 Garand! This one is an April 1945 build. All the drawing parts seem correct for this rifle, the stock has some nice inspector stamps, no rebuild marks, chamber in the white, and just seems as issued. It was sold through the CMP as a correct grade. The tag says 2012 but it looks like they didn’t go into stores until 2017 maybe based on old CMP forum posts I found. They were all Feb-April 1945 production rifles and all seemed to have that white rack number added to the butt stock. The FOIA I did for it showed that it did get sent to the CMP December 2011, so the timeframe adds up. I added a late WWII canvas sling to it as well. Overall I’m super happy with this one!

…but now I finally do! This example is a little rough, but most in the US aren’t perfect haha! The majority came from Spain but this example is a recent import from Finland. The import mark is super discrete. Bore is dark but rifling is OK, so I’ll take it shooting at some point. Disassembly was a little tricky, but once I figured it out it wasn’t much of a problem.

The Vietnam War was one of the last major US conflicts that service members were allowed to bring home modern made enemy war trophy rifles. This nice example of a Factory 26 Chinese SKS was brought back by a US Army Colonel. I wasn’t able to find much information out about his service, but it’s something I’ll continue to look into. According to his gravestone he served in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. This set has both the DD-603 War Trophy form and the export license that allowed him to bring it back to the States.

Took an updated photo of the French collection last night! Most are matching minus the MAS 36 and the bolt on one of the Mle 1892 Berthiers. French rifles have a crazy amount of variants, which is probably why I’ve been so interested in them haha!

-Mle 1886 M93 Lebel (1890)
-Mle 1907/15 (Oct 1916)
-Mle 1907/15 (Jan 1917)
-Mle 1890 Berthier
-Mle 1892 Berthier (Oct 1894)
-Mle 1892 Berthier (July 1914)
-Mle 1892 M16 Berthier (Sept 1918)
-Mle 1892 M16 (Jan 1921)
-M34 Berthier (1936)
-MAS 36 (Oct 1939)

I’ve been really starting to focus on French rifles the last year or so, and when I had a chance to pick up this uncommon example I didn’t want to hesitate.

This is an M34 Berthier, which is an interesting conversion to 7.5 French. These were converted from standard 1907/15 Berthier long rifles to use a more Mauser style magazine and modern tangent rear sight. It still has the same Berthier action as the WWI carbines and long rifles. It’s more of a short rifle pattern length as well. Overall it’s a neat effort by the French to get some more modern style arms into their inventory prior to WWII. These aren’t super rare, but fairly uncommon.