Where The Rabbit Hole Ended

Lucky Pierre said:

just curious....."why" so much of the same thing ?

Click to expand...

LP you must not collect the SKS platform. There are only a few duplicates in there. There are rifles from Russia, Albania, Romania, Yugoslavia (M59C-scarce), and China. Of the Chinese there's some commercial "Bubbas", my personal favorites, the Paratroopers. With the Chinese there's 2 basic bayonet changes, early blade Soviet produced & Chines produced, then spike bayos. Arsenal /26\ was the initial manufacturer for military T56 guns, then other arsenals became involved with production, there's specimens from the various other arsenals. The rarest rifle in there, but seemingly a standard SKS, is an Israeli Capture (IC) form a PLO cache in Syria or Lebanon. Arab 12 Mill Standard (weebly.com) The unique features of that rifle is the serial range (12M), laminate stock, blued bolt carrier, double cut bayo slot (blade & spike) & CAI import stamp.
The Paratrooper rifles have a degree on variations as well. I try to maintain 2 of the main counties of origin, except the Holy Grail rifles (Easy German, North Korean, North Vietnam), they are just too expensive if the seller KNOWS what he has, and extremely rare. Additionally, they were fairly cheap. Over the last several years I've sold 13 SKS (the first 3 guys bought 10) rifles and doubled or tripled my money, and they're great trade fodder. I traded 3 rifles (Yugo M59/66-$350, commercial non-military-$250 & home-grown Paratrooper-$300) for a Luxemburg FN49 that the fella was asking $2400 bucks for. PAX

I bought a Russian made SKS years ago (25+ years ago). Best I recall I paid $99 for it. Played around with it for a while, and I trade it around in various stocks, shoot it a bit, then put it away until some new fangled "cool looking" stock comes around and I gussy it up and play with it again.

Have always wanted to get a scope on it, but just never got around to it. That, plus the myriad of various scope mounts is enough to make your head swim, all claiming to be the best (scoping an SKS is problematic from a holding zero perspective). The dust cover is about the only real place to mount and it isn't exactly firmly attached and wobbles about. Meh, maybe I'll just pick a random you tube video and buy whatever super mount they're plugging and slap on a cheap 4x scope. No matter, it's gotta be better than the horrid irons on the thing.

Now these things are selling $350+? Geesh. Maybe with the ban on importation of all firearms and ammo from Russia, maybe it'll go up in value...maybe then I'll trade it or sell it...hmmm.

This isn't mine, but it looks exactly the same as this is the stock it is currently wearing: