New Yugo K98K at Wolverine
- Thread starter The_Red_Rabbit
- Start date
BattleRife
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- of No Fixed Address
You might have better luck just asking for more photos, as there's not a lot of people local to Wolverine. They operated for many years as a mail-order-only business before they finally built a retail showroom. And I've never yet met anyone who talked about visiting the showroom.
Placed an order. Fingers crossed.
Those markings are now part of firearms history, just like "proof marks"
A time will come when those markings just might add value to the firearm.
About 300$ more than I expected. They're priced like a Russian capture but are worse in every way as far as K98s go. Compared to a RC K98 these are almost 100% scrubbed of markings and of course non-matching. Often the barrels have been replaced with Yugo barrels and the stocks are cut back half an inch to accomodate them. Stocks are often in bad shape, cracked and suffer from rcoil lug setback as these were used and abused in WW2 and afterwards, post-refurb.
The ones pictured on on the CGN post look decent but that's only two rifles out of the bunch and the disclaimer is kinda sketchy, considering the #### rods I've seen in the past. They're probably functional but if a K98 is what you're looking for I'd probably look for a similarily priced Russian capture on the used marking of which I've seen plenty.
The ones pictured on on the CGN post look decent but that's only two rifles out of the bunch and the disclaimer is kinda sketchy, considering the #### rods I've seen in the past. They're probably functional but if a K98 is what you're looking for I'd probably look for a similarily priced Russian capture on the used marking of which I've seen plenty.
That's called HISTORY.
After WWII, Europe was floating in all of the milsurps we cherish so much today.
They captured warehouses full of new in wrap rifles dating back to the mid thirties. I saw a bunch of them. I didn't think anything of it in 1965. Everything was available that we can only dream of today.
A lot of nations picked up those rifles for the cost of driving a truck to the warehouse or the piles of them in the streets and loading them up to take home, for their own armies or to be reconditioned.
German markings weren't especially prized and often much hated.
Let me give you an example of a nation that scrubbed markings from their firearms, usually upon arrival from Germany.
Argentina, scrubbed the Star Of David from Ludwig and Lowe M91 rifles and carbines, because the government there hated Jews, it was very Catholic.
Israel scrubbed or peened over anything that reminded them of NAZIs.
Many Russian Capture K98s have their Waffenampts and "dirty birds" peened over.
Mind you, I've never seen a C96, Hsc, P38, or P08 with any Nazi markings stamped over.
Yugoslavia was pretty much being influenced by Russians and other neighboring nations at the time and they wanted to become members of the UN, seeing as they were created as a UN experiment, which failed, like most UN experiments.
They needed arms fast and they were left with a mix of AXIS/SOVIET/US equipment.
They knew all about Mausers, so they readily adopted the K98 and the M48 types into their service.
They did the same thing a lot of nations did at that time, they cleaned up anything that looked "NAZI" from the rifles and roll stamped their own symbols onto them during the FTR.
I remember a shipment of K98s out of Yugoslavia that surprised us at Lever Arms back in the late sixties. All of the crates were painted Soviet Slime Green but looked just like the crates used by Germany during WWII.
The only thing done was the painting on the crates. The rifles in the crates were early 1940s dated and new in wrap, with consecutive serial numbers.
I remember the consectutive serial numbers because I bought a crate of those rifles for $100 from Mr Lever and I had to strike them from the manifest, so the government would know they had been properly disposed of and not sent out of the country.
I don't mind people being fussy about what they collect, but in all honesty, history is history. In my mind that doesn't make the rifles less desirable.
They Yugoslavian armorers did a great job on those FTRed rifles. They will shoot better than most of the people shooting them can hold.
They were done with pride and lots of care.
OP, if you want one of those Yugo K98 FTRs, buy one. It won't be much longer and that stuff will never be available again, unless someone starts manufacturing replicas.
That comment was mostly in jest, but you're speaking of "present-time" conditions. If for some reason those markings are no longer applied, in a century or so, the markings could quite easily become sought-after anomalies.
arwithattitude
Member
Interesting how the evil, terrible "Russian Capture" rifles have gone from being hardly worth even talking about, to being a much sought after surplus rifle. I watched the standard "it's just an old Lee Enfield rifle with poor headspace", and so on, be repeated again and again, to having those rifles becoming a hot collector rifle. Same as cars. Jeez, I remember using a '55 Chev in a demolition derby. I have somewhere in the neighbourhood of 140+ of "them old army rifles" in my personal pile. It took a few years for some of them to start creeping up in value, but creep up they did, all of them. I'd like to say that I could see into the future and just knew this would happen, but, alas, I was just a milsurp junkie who loved the history and the workmanship, along with the lore of an old battle rifle.
140 you say?
You're just starting.
I don't have anything like what I had at one time, close to 900. Most in pristine or close to it condition.
They're mostly gone now. Sold off, given to friends and family, etc.
I collected, cared for, studied, shot them for the same reasons as you suggest. I loved the history and enjoyed comparing them to each other, shooting under different conditions to see how much advantage one would have over the other.
I have quite literally shot close to a million rounds over my shooting career, not as much as some, but more than most.
I had a great time doing it and so did a lot of other folks I know. We learned a lot during that time.
Those days are coming to an end. It's pretty obvious the days of surplus firearms and ammunition will be severely limited or shut down in the future, even if we manage to hold onto our firearms.
The surplus ammo for most of the firearms I used to shoot and collect is now just a memory, other than a few lots hidden away in basements, etc.
It's now cheaper for governments to destroy surplus/beyond useful state ammo and firearms than it is to offer them for sale to the public.
Bureaucracy, red tape, licensing, book work, etc all have made it far to expensive and tedious for it to be profitable. Add shipping, handling, distribution, etc on top of that and many of those old warhorses are a pretty good deal by the time we get them.
bearhunter: Good man! I rubbed shoulders with some mighty fine people over the years, and almost all of them were gunners. Some have gone on to the big shooting range - George Armstrong aka "smellie", Wayne Stairs aka buffdog, to name a couple. Some years back, three of us went together and got a dealer licence. Oh boy! We bought guns and ammo, nearly all surplus. We kept what we wanted and sold the rest. We didn't make any money, but we sure ended up with a lot of guns and ammo!
As you say, those days are coming to an end. More and more ineffective rules and regulations being dumped on us. The whole atmosphere is changing, and I don't meant the weather. I am so glad I was born when I was. As a kid, I was surrounded in my little home town by veterans of several wars and conflicts. Many, or maybe most, started with next to nothing, worked hard, raised families. We lost our last WW2 veteran a couple of years ago. I doubt anything worthwhile is being taught in our schools regarding the wars that involved our past members of this community. That connection has been cut now, so we drift.
As you say, those days are coming to an end. More and more ineffective rules and regulations being dumped on us. The whole atmosphere is changing, and I don't meant the weather. I am so glad I was born when I was. As a kid, I was surrounded in my little home town by veterans of several wars and conflicts. Many, or maybe most, started with next to nothing, worked hard, raised families. We lost our last WW2 veteran a couple of years ago. I doubt anything worthwhile is being taught in our schools regarding the wars that involved our past members of this community. That connection has been cut now, so we drift.
Last edited:
