Best Investment Milsurp

I still say the P38 pistol will become the next big thing. Original configuration and matching examples will jump in value soon. They have been sitting idle for some time, and they are due.

JoeN, what I can't fathom is people are willing to pay more money for a mismatched, refinished RC P38 than they are for a vet bringback or even excellent condition all matching, war time dated pistol.

Something is definitely out of whack there. There isn't even any guarantee the RCs saw combat service. Many of those pistols came out of warehouses that were in poor repair and the pistols were all sent to a refurb depot for refinishing. There, they were stripped into separate components and the parts were all thrown into a bin for refinishing and later assembly from a hodgepodge of parts bins.
 
That' exactly what I cannot figure out as well!
bearhunter said:
I still say the P38 pistol will become the next big thing. Original configuration and matching examples will jump in value soon. They have been sitting idle for some time, and they are due.

JoeN, what I can't fathom is people are willing to pay more money for a mismatched, refinished RC P38 than they are for a vet bringback or even excellent condition all matching, war time dated pistol.

Something is definitely out of whack there. There isn't even any guarantee the RCs saw combat service. Many of those pistols came out of warehouses that were in poor repair and the pistols were all sent to a refurb depot for refinishing. There, they were stripped into separate components and the parts were all thrown into a bin for refinishing and later assembly from a hodgepodge of parts bins.
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55recce said:
I disagree on SKS being a good investment. Fun and cheap to shoot for sure but not a good return on money.

Firstly the market is saturated with cheap SKS, secondly they are not quality, thirdly they are not highly desirable to most collectors just good cheap shooters, fourthly it may be that all semi auto rifles will be restricted in the future (remember the long gun registry that everyone was happy to get rid of? When the Conservatives have gone as they inevitably will, the Liberals or NDP will get in. They will want tighter gun laws and will not redo the long gun registry so the next likely target will be semi autos and hand guns).

So for long term investment buy quality bolt action firearms or antique firearams that can still be shot with obsolete calibre ammo. Also buy lots of ammo. Crates of 7.62x39 may be a better buy than SKS.
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I agree with you, a friend of mine bought 2 cases of SKS when they first came in to Canada YEARS ago. The Lee Enfield, Springfields, Krags, Garands, ect all went up in Value. The SKS went up a little bit... but not much.
 
smellie said:
Likely there is GOOD ADVICE earlier in this thread, especially if you cannot afford to invest heavily in top-end items (Borchardts, early Broomhandles, G-41s, K-43s, Johnsons and the like): start off with a crate each of 91/30 Moisin-Nagant rifles and SKSs, along with a couple crates of ammo for each. That is an investment which will start to pay off, cash-wise, in about 5 years.
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I almost completely agree with you, still, they are bringing SKS in by the boat load. Just about every young guy out there that is new into shooting goes and buys one. While there are a lot of people out there making modifications to their SKS, very few of them actually have to modify the gun itself, as most of the stuff is bolt on rather than drill and tap. The SKS has been in Canada for over 30 years and while the price has gone up on them, it is going up equal in value to that of the dollar.

There was a point in the 20th Century where everyone thought that good China was going to become collectors and thus needed to be taken care of and preserved. Problem was no one thought about the everyday dishes. Dishes from the 1900-1960 can bring good money now. The only way to collect the SKS is to buy them by country/manufacturer. IE North Korea, Vietnam, ect. How Many people have Russian or Chinese SKS's.... everyone. How many people have seen a North Korean build SKS? There use to be lots of the Yugo 59/66 SKS, now, they fetch a premium, why? How often do you find them? What is the Value on a 59/66? Well what does it matter? And yes the question is valid. A buddy of mine is trying to sell A CZ-52/57 brand new in the wrap and grease, but no one is willing to pay the money for it because "You can buy a new SKS for $###.XX". People are willing to pay $600-$750 for the CZ- 858 because they don't see it and an SKS, but more like A Czech AK. I have heard people argue a Ruger Mini-30 isn't worth buying as they can get a SKS for a quarter to a third of the price.

Invest? That's simple, handguns. Walther P-38, 1911's (They were use in more than WW1 and WW2), Lugers, S&W revolvers (1917 in .45 acp, .455 Eley, Victory) Colt revolvers (1917 in .45 acp, .455 Eley) , Browning High Power. Maybe try shotguns...there are a number still out there, Savage 77e with US marking (Vietnam), Ithaca 37 (Vietnam most likely), Winchester Model 12 and 97 (both trench and riot configurations show up from time to time), Stevens 520-30 and 620 (both trench and riot configurations show up from time to time), there are even Remington 870's and Winchester 1200's that show up the odd time with US markings. Rifles? G41W or G41M (if you can afford the tag), G43 or K43 (Same thing), Johnson M1941 (very interesting but big price tag again), ANY of the snipers, Garands, Springfields 1903, LONG Lee's, Lee Metford, HELL even a Lee speed sporter (not military but did you see "The Ghost and the Darkness"?), FN 49, AG42B, Rashid Carbine, M-1 Carbines, ect. there is lots to choose from.

Don't buy something to sit on it with dreams of making money, by the gun as something you actually want and want to keep. If the value goes up and you tire of it, bonus for you.

Also, keep in mind, there is the odd time that something like "Captured" surplus comes up, like the German K-98's that were Russian Captures. These are perfect pieces to get, as not only are they original and have original wear and tear on them, THEY WERE THERE, and they saw enough combat to be captured!
 
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Budget is the biggest factor. All milsups will appreciate and due to current firearm laws, non-restricted will appreciate quicker than restricted. However, restricted owners are very passionate and if they took the time to get a license, usually they are a serious collector or an old shooter.

M1's, K98's and anything from WWII or WWI are appreciating quicker than post-war or neutral country firearms. They have history and people are willing to pay for that history.

There are still bargins out there or relative bargins. If you are patient and willing to import there are even more bargins south of the border. For example: K98's $1200 all matching ($1800+ in Canada), G/K43's $1500 ($2500+ in Canada), M1 Garands Lend Lease $650 ($1200+ in Canada), Swedish M/41-42 Snipers $1200 ( $2000+ in Canada).

Don't get me wrong, I support Canadian dealers, but I'm not engaged to their daughters. If I can save $500+ after import fees or get a finer example......

Deals are still out there, you just need to be patient and search.
 
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Respectfully, if you are getting into milsurps for future value it may be a bad investment. While some do demand grandious prices others do not. Now Enfield's are nice to shoot but there are a gazillion of them out there. SKS, don't let anyone tell you they are a bad gun. Those that talk quality and SKS never shot a Yugo M59 or M59/66AB1 that is a quality firearm and blows the doors off any other SKS including the Russian. M1 Garand's are very nice but the price is getting astronomical but all in all a fun gun to shoot. The SVT-40 I got one on the advice of my son and I never had much interest in them till I got one, weird how a gun you hardly noticed can capture the imagination when you read up on the history (I am a real history buff, and it is too bad that I cannot get a permit for FA's even if I can't shoot them, I would rather I never owned one then subject a historical object to DEWAT). In Canada it is what it is, firearms are a risky investment here, you never know when the Justin Trudeau's of the world are going to come to power and say Surprise today we are banning them all, didn't I tell you I was going to do that? I must have been speaking in French at the time. Honestly the value of my milsurps means little to me, I got an Enfield sporter No.4 MkIII from my dad and it started me on this very kewl road where you can pickup and use a piece of history, can't do that in a museum. He has a really funny story of grandma buying it and slinging it over her shoulder and riding the bus across town in Lethbridge AB, nobody back then even blinked. I still giggle thinking of this little old lady (thats is what Grandma is to me but at the time she would have been in her 30's) walking around with a gun in the city. She was telling everyone it was for he sons birthday. LOL. Imagine that these days. Ask anyone on here and they have a Holy Grail of Milsurps that they want and they could care less about the price (but like myself Mama Bear will only tolerate so much, but I must be wearing her down because she never blinked at me buying a crate of 7.62X54r from SFRC.). My advice is collect because you like it, there are many better investments but IMHO none as rewarding as holding and shooting a piece of history.
 
I moved up my acquisition of WW1 stuff because of this...the 100th anniversary next year. If we get an influx of movies and books and renewed interest that is - which may happen, but also may not.
I would rather invest in something I enjoy, thus I am staying away from SKS's. Plus I figure the sure quantity, 30 million I think, will keep prices low for 100yrs which is beyond my life expectancy and thus I could not care less what happens to them in 2112.
The only time I lost money on a milsurp was one that I damaged. God damn squib load! Everything else has made money on the sale end, even the stuff I slightly overpaid at the time.

JP said:
With the 100 anniversary of WW1 coming up, interest in the weapons of this era is sure to go up dramatically iin the next few years. With the prices of Mausers, Garands, Enfield, Arisakas going crazy lately, I think the real sleepers right now are the Carcanos.
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grove said:
mosin nagants are really cheap at $200 for a round receiver, $300 for a hex out here in vancouver area.

Sks's can be had as cheap as $150+tax.

Enfields are great shooting guns but the .303 ammo is bloody expensive!!!

I stick to the soviet rifles because they are extremely affordable to shoot, even all day.
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x2!
 
I simply do NOT understand this terrible problem with ammunition.

The .303 and the .30-'06 and the 7.92x57 and the 7x57 and the 7.65x54 and the 6.5x55 and the 7.5x55 and 7.4x54 and 8x60R Krop and 8x50R and 8x50.5 Lebel and 7.7x56 Jap and 6.5x52 Carcano and 6.5x50SR Jap and a whole bunch of others all cost exactly the SAME.

They all take the same primers, same powders. Only differences are in the bullet diameters and the brass casings.

Once you have the BRASS (which so many guys THROW AWAY), they ALL cost about SIXTY CENTS A SHOT FOR MATCH-GRADE AMMO.

You can make up plinking loads with cast bullets for $1.25 a BOX with the C.E. Harris UNIVERSAL LOAD.

(Of course, that rises all the way to $1.90 a box if you want Gas Checks.)

Handloading is the ONLY WAY to go. Spend $200 on a half-decent set of tooling and a Mould.... and you're in business.

EVEN I can do it!

In the meantime, while you are busily banging off all that cheapo Partizan and S&B ammo, throw your empties my way! It is really DECENT brass!
 
smellie:

Except that not all brass is cheaply had. Lebel brass, for example, is expensive when available. Of course, most of the rare calibers are easily formed from other cheaper cases if you have the tools, skills and time.
 
smellie said:
I simply do NOT understand this terrible problem with ammunition.

The .303 and the .30-'06 and the 7.92x57 and the 7x57 and the 7.65x54 and the 6.5x55 and the 7.5x55 and 7.4x54 and 8x60R Krop and 8x50R and 8x50.5 Lebel and 7.7x56 Jap and 6.5x52 Carcano and 6.5x50SR Jap and a whole bunch of others all cost exactly the SAME.

They all take the same primers, same powders. Only differences are in the bullet diameters and the brass casings.

Once you have the BRASS (which so many guys THROW AWAY), they ALL cost about SIXTY CENTS A SHOT FOR MATCH-GRADE AMMO.

You can make up plinking loads with cast bullets for $1.25 a BOX with the C.E. Harris UNIVERSAL LOAD.

(Of course, that rises all the way to $1.90 a box if you want Gas Checks.)

Handloading is the ONLY WAY to go. Spend $200 on a half-decent set of tooling and a Mould.... and you're in business.

EVEN I can do it!

In the meantime, while you are busily banging off all that cheapo Partizan and S&B ammo, throw your empties my way! It is really DECENT brass!
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You are absolutely right. My buddy has A Jap. Arisaka type 99, and feeding the beast kills his wallet. 7.7x58 (not 56) is going for $80 a box! And that is hunting grade ammo. I keep telling him to get dies as I can reload for him and get the cost down to $14-$17 per 20 rounds and it ends up being better quality ammo.
 
smellie said:
Once you have the BRASS (which so many guys THROW AWAY), they ALL cost about SIXTY CENTS A SHOT FOR MATCH-GRADE AMMO....
In the meantime, while you are busily banging off all that cheapo Partizan and S&B ammo, throw your empties my way! It is really DECENT brass!
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Don't tell people this!!! Finding freshly fired in the box 7.62x54r or .303 in the garbage can at the range is usually the highlight of my day.
 
I have over 1000 rounds of 9mm on hand and buckets of brass. Over 400 .30'06. A bucket of Super which my 1911 Steyr will like when I'm finished with it. Enough .45ACP that I gave a couple hundred to a friend a while back and didn't notice the difference. A thousand Boxer-primed military (Defence Industries) .303.

I have NEVER bought a box of .303 brass.

Or 9mm.

OR .45ACP.

OR Super.

I DID buy one bag of '06 brass and a bag of 8x57.

In THIRTY YEARS. It's ALL range pickups.

Some of the hard-to-find ones you will have to buy. Trade-Ex has most of them in nice big bags. Costs money but if you wanta shoot a Berthier, you gotta pay for it...... but it's a lot easier to get 100 brass than it is to find FIVE live rounds that will work. Six-five Jap you can make out of .220 Swift. With a lathe you can make Swift into Carcano or Mannlicher-Schoenauer. Seven-seven Jap can be made out of '06 if you make the slightest effort to keep pressures down to Mil Spec. Ought-six makes into 7x57, 8x57, 6.5x57....... more than EIGHTY different cases.

And so forth and so on.

You don't need me to tell you that.

But DO keep an eye on the ground after you finish your shooting. And ALWAYS check the barrel.
 
smellie said:
The MARKET is the ultimate arbiter when it comes to "investment" items. Personally, I think that if you are getting into Milsurps because you want an "investment" and so that you can "grow your portfolio", you would be better off leaving the rest of us in peace and quietly going away. There is NO GUARANTEE that you will "make money in Milsurps" even though it may appear, from prices, that you are hauling it in hand over fist.

If you are into Milsurps because you love the feel of them or you are fascinated by the technology, the history, or even just the prospect of shooting the rifles and pistols that MADE the world we live in, heck, I'll help as much as I can! To me, that's what it's all about.

But The Market can be a fickle beast. The days of the $8.50 Moisin-Nagant Korea captures and the Simpson's-Sears clearance-sale Ishapore SMLEs are gone, along with the $2 Vetterlis and the $9.98 Werndls. Gone also are the racks and racks of unfired Kar98ks at $27.50 and the racks of Kar-43s at $60 and the $99 Gew-41s and the $39.50 Johnsons and the Carcanos at $24.95 a CRATE. They all have advanced (the survivors of The Eternal Bubba, anyway) into stratospheric heights...... in comparison.

But in comparison only. The minimum wage is no longer 50 cents an hour.... as it was, back then. MONEY has inflated terribly in our time and what I look at is how long I would have to work to get something today, as compared to 40 years ago. By THOSE lights, most Milsurps have HELD their values..... and that is a LOT more than you can say for most other manufactured articles. If you had started, 50 years ago, collecting high-quality phonograph records (and there were some very good ones, make no mistake) you would find that some of them, today, will bring small fortunes; early Elvis, Beatles, Stones less so, will bring high rices but so very much (Musical Masterpiece Society recordings, for example) will bring a buck each in today's degenerate money but they COST a day's work when new. So that is a net LOSS if you invested in good music, a huge gain if you bought pop crap. The Market decides and the Market, all too often, is like Prince Igor: no taste!

Friend TIRIAQ is right, of course: CONDITION is paramount, but only IF you have something in which The Market has an interest. In a shoot-off between a beat-to-death-I've-been-through-6-wars 98 Mauser and a brand-new 1935 Mauser-built still in grease, guess which one is going to top-out the price list? Right. I would look for the first one because I KNOW I could not possibly afford the brand-new one. The brand-new one would be an INVESTMENT, the beat-up one would make a great SHOOTER and a fine topic of conversation. Hmmmm....... better get one of each! In this particular case, neither one is going to go down in "value": the pristine museum-piece aways will command top dollar and the other one will always put meat in the freezer.

RARITY ALONE means nothing. Give you 2 examples. I have 2 rifles here which are very rare. One is a pristine unfired 1944 Long Branch Number 4 with exhibition-grade wood and workmanship, British-type parts and no serial number. The other is an Italian 6.5mm Armaguerra Model 39 semi-auto rifle; it is the rarest of all WW2 combat rifles, with less than 100 built. In the seven and a half years I have been on this forum, nobody has even asked to see a picture of them. The Armaguerra has been "valued" by an expert at HALF of the current going price for a refurb Garand..... and there were 6.5 MILLION Garands built. That is 65,000 Garands for each and every Armaguerra. So RARITY per se has nothing to do with it. There also must be INTEREST.

It is INTEREST which has pushed the prices of Garands to insane heights, and likely it will be interest which holds them there. There were 1% as many Johnsons built as Garands, but at least people KNOW about them. Right now a Johnson goes for about 4 times the price of a Garand in the same condition, despite their comparative rarity. Judged by NUMBER, Gew-41M and Gew-41W are the cheapest Milsurps around.... and their numbers are shocking, IF you can find one at all.

Likely there is GOOD ADVICE earlier in this thread, especially if you cannot afford to invest heavily in top-end items (Borchardts, early Broomhandles, G-41s, K-43s, Johnsons and the like): start off with a crate each of 91/30 Moisin-Nagant rifles and SKSs, along with a couple crates of ammo for each. That is an investment which will start to pay off, cash-wise, in about 5 years.

In the meantime, Bubba and Tapco are hard at work, massacring the ones currently in circulation. At the rate they are going, good originals WILL start to pay off fairly quickly..... so you get crates of the BEST you can afford.
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I agree with you.I have recently started collecting ww1 andww2 rifles because of the history not investment.That's not to say i wouldn't be happy if they did go up in value but i am collecting and keeping these beauties.
 
Pigeonman said:
Question?

I'm thinking about a new purchase and the Milsurps have caught my eye. I'm wondering what you all suggest would be a wise purchase from an investment standpoint? Prices on many Milsurps seem to be on the uprise and availability of some types thinning out if you believe everything you hear and read.

Thoughts please.
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You will do much better just buying land or real estate if looking for an investment and making a big buck.

Freedom 55 and Retirement won't come from a case of SKS rifles. Maybe with a few semi loads! Maybe with a fully stocked gun warehouse too in your backyard!

Your hair with fall out and turn grey before that happens.

I really don't know anyone who buys milsurps as an investment. Most people collect them, hunt with them, and use them at the range and are interested in the history.

Having said that, you can buy all the milsurps you want when you sell some land or real estate.

Hoarding is the answer! And with inflation, prices will go up, usually and hopefully, but not always.
 
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I just bought my 1st LE No.4, it is a bubba special but a candidate for restoration. I bought it since the No.4 was my grandfathers service rifle and I wanted a piece of history. If in 20 years the restoration rifle is worth 10x what I paid I don't care since it has sentimental value to me and will remain in my possession. There are better "investments" out there.
 
Grove said:
Mosin Nagants are really cheap at $200 for a round receiver, $300 for a Hex out here in Vancouver area.

SKS's can be had as cheap as $150+tax.

Enfields are great shooting guns but the .303 ammo is bloody EXPENSIVE!!!

I stick to the Soviet rifles because they are extremely affordable to shoot, even all day.
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Who has 91/30's right now?
 
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