The Chinese commercial SKS rifles that have been done up by importers actually do fetch quite a bit of money in Canada. The farmers friend on the EE went for about the equivalent of what it would have in the USA.
There are collectors everywhere, Canada included, and someone will always buy it. In the U.S., more people would be interested.
As for the armies fielding DMR's, it was done by all sides, but wasn't standard. There are plenty of pics to show them in combat.
There are several variations of side mounts, but there are a whole bunch that are identical, because some countries or militant groups found a way to do it easily and effectively. Even in the picture I posted above, 2/3 are identical mounts.
I'm not going to debate the value of rifles. They always go up over time. Every generation will complain about the prices.
Yugo M59/66 SKS rifles are going up, so are SVT-40's, so Finnish M39's.
We can complain all we want, just like how many older guys complain about how the Lee Enfield is only worth $30 because that's what they used to sell for.
Long branch Lee Enfields by the barrel full... $30 each.
Surplus dries up, and prices go up over time.
We can come back to this post in a few years and we will see how today's prices are tomorrow's "bargains."
@ pcvando
The Yugoslav war DMR rifles are not very common in Canada and are hard to authenticate. They were never made by or fielded by any armed force in official capacity, they're just cobbled together.
The endless variety of scoped Chinese SKS rifles from the late 1980s and early 1990s have little to no collectors market in Canada and very few were brought across the line into Canada. They're just made up commercial guns. I wouldn't mind owning a few of them, though.
The only Russian variants are in museums, they were just prototypes because SKS "sniper" doesn't make a whole lot of sense with a round with an effective range of 300m and a 3 MOA rifle to go with it.
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To touch on the recent trend of Yugoslavian SKS rifles being listed at and/or selling for over $600 (I've seen $1000-$2000). It's absolutely hilarious. Yes, many of them were in unissued condition but they offer absolutely no advantage over a Russian or Chinese rifle in unissued condition and Yugoslavia is not really known for manufacturing high quality firearms. The recent imports (SKS, M48, etc) may look nice but that's as far as it goes. I sold all of my Yugoslavian SKS and Mauser rifles and couldn't be happier. Sometimes the EE is more like "supply and command" than it is "supply and demand".
