Swiss veterali sold surplus North America ?
- Thread starter y2k
- Start date
Bannerman of NY bought a few hundred thousand from the Swiss and others that he sold off in both the US and Canadian marketplace.
https://archive.org/details/francis-bannerman-military-goods-catalogue-1903/page/n7/mode/2up
He had so many he even sold them in bulk to Sears Roebuck who also then sold them after sporterizing them through their mail order catalogue.
Sears claim they bought them from the Swiss Government but that was actually through Bannerman who had all the contacts and did lots of buying of surplus and obsolete guns from militarizes and governments in bulk.
So many were commonly available in NA that Winchester, Remington and others even made and loaded .41 Swiss rimfire up for sale in NA until to at least WW2 if not later.
Plus ammo was still being made in Europe and shipped here even after WW2.
Winfield (also called Western) Arms Corp of LA was founded post WW2 in the 1950's.
https://archive.org/details/francis-bannerman-military-goods-catalogue-1903/page/n7/mode/2up
He had so many he even sold them in bulk to Sears Roebuck who also then sold them after sporterizing them through their mail order catalogue.
Sears claim they bought them from the Swiss Government but that was actually through Bannerman who had all the contacts and did lots of buying of surplus and obsolete guns from militarizes and governments in bulk.
So many were commonly available in NA that Winchester, Remington and others even made and loaded .41 Swiss rimfire up for sale in NA until to at least WW2 if not later.
Plus ammo was still being made in Europe and shipped here even after WW2.
Winfield (also called Western) Arms Corp of LA was founded post WW2 in the 1950's.
BlackPowderBurner
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My Vetterli 69/71 was marked with pencil in the barrel channel by a farmer in southern Manitoba who dated his writing as 1922.
Lots of them around in various condition. I have a few. Four I have fired by swapping my bolt, changed it to center fire. Always fun to shoot.
Beginning around the early 1900's initially but they had so many still coming in or in storage it actually took about 50 to 60 years to sell them all on the civilian market.
That is why firearms ads from the 1950's still had them for sale as in this ad from the Golden State Arms Corp in the February 1958 issue of Guns Magazine.
The Swiss made about 300,000 of all their 10.4x38mm versions.
The Swiss started to sell their Vetterli rifles off to buyers like Bannerman's around the early 1900's.
When you include the Italian M1870 and M1870/87 Vetterli's in 10.4×47mmR, the number made is about 1.6 million rifles.
Before World War I, Italy still had about 1,300,000 M1870/87 rifles still in their inventories, of which 500 000 got sold to a private arms firm, Zumino & Rossetti. These 500,000 guns are the M70/87 rifles then sent to Russia. In total, about 700 000 Italian Vetterli rifles got later converted to 6.5mm.
The Italians used their 6.5mm versions until about 1950 before selling the remaining 6.5mm versions off.
Frank Barnes reported in one of his books that surplus Vetterli rifles were still used in "surprising number" by civilians in the U.S. for hunting deer up through to about 1972.
