SKS: PRC vs USSR

Dakk

Dakk

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Where are these two headed, both in terms of price & popularity?

I remember when I first saw an SKS in person back in the 1990s. They were cheap Chinese made ($79 iirc), and they seemed it. At the time I had heard that some of the ones that had sold had issues with jamming. One of the rifles even had cracks in the wood stock.

In the time between then and now, it seems things have changed a bit. Soviet SKSs became quite popular, and prices apparently jumped up to $300-$400 for a time. Imports of the Soviet SKSs have increased and they seem to be better quality, to me at least. With more Soviet SKSs in the Canadian market, the prices have gone from the $300-400 range to $179-$250 range. In the meanwhile... I hear people are still paying close to $200 for a Chinese one.

There are far more Chinese SKSs in existence world-wide than Soviet ones. Though I'm not sure to what degree the world-wide numbers affect indivudual closed markets, like Canada. We seem pretty insulated from the affects of prices in the US for instance, just because of the trade barrier between us. So world-wide numbers may not matter much.

IMO, the Chinese SKSs shouldn't be valued the same as the Ruskie ones. But right now, they are in the same $200 ballpark apparently. Are we about to see the value of Chinese SKSs slip back down in comparison to the Soviet ones? Or are the Chinese SKSs going to hold their value against the Russian made ones?
 
Who knows? They shoot the same, but Russian versions have far better build quality overall. For rising prices here, I see the SKS M and D models being worth the most, since thye are the most "tactiqueer" out of the box.
 
Hopefully the number of tactified SKS compounds astronomically over the next few years, leaving guys with un-butchered rifles a bit of a niche market (numbers matching and all original) :D
 
Personally, I have considered a 'tacticool' project on a Russian refurb or Chinese SKS. But I'm also planning to get myself a nice original condition Soviet SKS. With everyone butchering SKSs I think we will see more of a line drawn between non-refurbed Soviet SKS, and everything else. The refurbs and Chinese SKSs will likely drop in value, even if just through attrition of value by inflation (price stays the same, but $ value decreases over time). I think there will always be a healthy demand for an original (non-refurb) Russian SKS, as long as people are collecting guns.

Probably 'tacticool' wasn't the right word. I don't like the gaudy plastic surgury I see most people doing when they 'tacticool' something. But I would like to dress a Soviet refurb up with a monte carlo stock and scope.
 
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Have a couple SKS's from early-mid '90s (one D-Box, one fixed mag), can't see any differences in quality between them and a more recently purchased fix mag (2002 or so) - all of them are very well made and durable, jamming non-existent. I've dragged the two fixed mag models through hell and back.

Could be there was a couple bad shipments that made it through in the front end.
 
Dakk said:
Personally, I have considered a 'tacticool' project on a Russian refurb or Chinese SKS. But I'm also planning to get myself a nice original condition Soviet SKS. With everyone butchering SKSs I think we will see more of a line drawn between non-refurbed Soviet SKS, and everything else. The refurbs and Chinese SKSs will likely drop in value, even if just through attrition of value by inflation (price stays the same, but $ value decreases over time). I think there will always be a healthy demand for an original (non-refurb) Russian SKS, as long as people are collecting guns.

Probably 'tacticool' was the right word. I don't like the gaudy plastic surgury I see most people doing when they 'tacticool' something. But I would like to dress a Soviet refurb up with a monte carlo stock and scope.
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Given the way Chinese and Russian refurb rifles have been treated by the masses, there could come a time when a nicely refurbed Russian, or an early Factory 26 Chinese in original condition could be worth more too. Not as much as a unrefurbed good condition Russian, but more than a bubba'd gun.
 
there is a big difference between the cheap commercial chinese sks you saw years ago and the military ones on the market now. They are every bit as tough and well designed as a russian with a couple unique features so no, I dont see them dropping much in price for a long time
 
supernova said:
there is a big difference between the cheap commercial chinese sks you saw years ago and the military ones on the market now. They are every bit as tough and well designed as a russian with a couple unique features so no, I dont see them dropping much in price for a long time
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That's pretty interesting. I didn't realize there was a difference in the Chinese production for military & commercial markets.

I've read that there were about 15 million SKSs produced worldwide, and I've also read Chinese production numbers ranging from 8-14 million. I don't think anyone has the exact numbers, so that's probably a vague estimate. How about the fact that so many more Chinese SKSs have been produced; does anyone think that should affect the value of a Chinese SKS, compared to a Russian one?

Personally, I think the harder to find variants will likely increase in value.

In regard to non-refurb russian SKSs, let's say that for every 1 ruskie SKS there are 10 Chinese SKS. That's very conservative. Then if less than 5% of all Russian SKSs are true non-refurbs. Then 1 in every 200 (or 0.5%) SKS's is a russian, non-refurb. Then consider that there's 7 russian production years represented in that 0.5%. So represented as an average, if you're looking for a 1954 russian non-refurb, we're talking about (roughly) a 0.07% representation among all SKSs. Even if it were 0.1%, that's less than 1 in 1000 SKSs. Now consider the chances of owning a non-refurbed russian SKS made in 1949, or one made in the Izhevsk arsenal (53 & 54). I'm not familiar with Chinese variants, but I'm sure there must be some rarer variants, like the 56 sino-soviets.

I'm going to bank on a non-refurb Tula 55/56. The reason being that although there's some lack of info as to whether they were actually produced in early 1956, or late 1955, but there's no question that they represent a different variant, and the time factor for production was obviously much shorter than for other years prior; though a slightly greater percentage of them may have survived, being newer. The other reason being that I suspect the 55/56 is a little more readily available for purchase than a few of the other rarer variants (for now), and under appreciated.
 
Seeing as the tooling used by the russians were sold/gifted by the russians to the chinese to allow them to build there own rifles the shouldn't be much difference. The first few years China made their military runs, they were supervised by russians.

Wood is different, and changes were made over time but the Chinese military versions are a good rifle. The commercially made chinese rifles are hit and miss. So to speak.
 
Dakk said:
That's pretty interesting. I didn't realize there was a difference in the Chinese production for military & commercial markets.

I've read that there were about 15 million SKSs produced worldwide, and I've also read Chinese production numbers ranging from 8-14 million. I don't think anyone has the exact numbers, so that's probably a vague estimate. How about the fact that so many more Chinese SKSs have been produced; does anyone think that should affect the value of a Chinese SKS, compared to a Russian one?

Personally, I think the harder to find variants will likely increase in value.

In regard to non-refurb russian SKSs, let's say that for every 1 ruskie SKS there are 10 Chinese SKS. That's very conservative. Then if less than 5% of all Russian SKSs are true non-refurbs. Then 1 in every 200 (or 0.5%) SKS's is a russian, non-refurb. Then consider that there's 7 russian production years represented in that 0.5%. So represented as an average, if you're looking for a 1954 russian non-refurb, we're talking about (roughly) a 0.07% representation among all SKSs. Even if it were 0.1%, that's less than 1 in 1000 SKSs. Now consider the chances of owning a non-refurbed russian SKS made in 1949, or one made in the Izhevsk arsenal (53 & 54). I'm not familiar with Chinese variants, but I'm sure there must be some rarer variants, like the 56 sino-soviets.

I'm going to bank on a non-refurb Tula 55/56. The reason being that although there's some lack of info as to whether they were actually produced in early 1956, or late 1955, but there's no question that they represent a different variant, and the time factor for production was obviously much shorter than for other years prior; though a slightly greater percentage of them may have survived, being newer. The other reason being that I suspect the 55/56 is a little more readily available for purchase than a few of the other rarer variants (for now), and under appreciated.
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48% of all stats are made up on the spot.
 
My Chinese military and Russian refurb shoot about the same at 100 yards, and both have never had a stoppage that wasn't the fault of the ammo.

Chinese commercial will often be inferior to both Chinese military and Russian, not always, but often enough.
 
supernova said:
48% of all stats are made up on the spot.
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Probably more like 90%. And even the ones that aren't made up probably aren't correct.

But, in fairness, I did used words like "lets say" and "if" assuming people would understand what they meant. I don't think anyone has accurate stats on SKS builds or the existence of variants... though I see numbers offered here in the forums from time to time.
 
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