Ukrainian surplus coming soon?

It's a shame the invaders/liberators (or whatever affiliation u want to call it) disassembled the LCW ammunition factory in the Ukraine when they conquered it. I really miss that stuff. Maybe some enterprising Russian will take it over and start selling that quality of ammo to the western world again.
 
sestroretsk said:
FYI - I got to see a crate from this recent shipment, and it appears as though they came from/through Czechia - there is a list of rifles in the crate labelled 'Bedna' stapled to the crates. The Cyrillic prefixes are listed on those lists.
There are BY markings stencilled on the crates, but they were also on crates that were around 5 or so years ago that came with Russian language paperwork inside.
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Thanks, that's exactly what I was told about the way of those MNs - middle man was in Czech Republic, purchased it some time ago from Belarus, it was not a "fresh deal", these MNs were available some time ago for dealers.
 
G4kTOHD.jp


G4kTOHD.jpg


Modified Mosin in Donbas
 
Horilka said:
Thanks, that's exactly what I was told about the way of those MNs - middle man was in Czech Republic, purchased it some time ago from Belarus, it was not a "fresh deal", these MNs were available some time ago for dealers.
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Interesting!
I noticed quite a few differences between this batch and 5 years ago batch.
These crates are longer, and use mostly laminate material for construction and dividers are not felt lined. Sealed with more of a wax paper inside than the semi-translucent cosmoline paper that was in the wood-board crates with Russian documentation. The old crates also had the same BY stencilling but some other shipping markings on them are different.
This batch is mostly lacking Soviet refurb marks, most numbers are Electro pencilled, most rear sights are unpinned. The ones that have all stamped numbers are all Soviet refurb marked (the one I remember vividly had the Riga facility damp).
 
As has already been said, I doubt we will see little if any surplus anything coming from Ukraine..those boys are busy using whatever guns they can get their hands on fighting off the russians.
 
I see some of this batch have wartime barrels on earlier hex receivers. I wonder if that was done wartime or if they are post war refurb parts jumbles.

Edit - not to say what came before were not parts jumbles... I just haven’t seen that barrel/receiver combo before.
 
VuDu666 said:
It's funny but Mosin and SKS cost more in Ukrainian stores than they cost here. Last time I was in Kiev, regular Mosin rifles were about 500 CAD in store and and I saw Russian SKS go anywhere between 450 and 800. Ones for around 450-500 looked like a bus ran over it. So yea guys, enjoy while you can.
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I see no reason to pay around 420$ for a shooter grade Mosin to a dealer. For that money you can find good deals on EE. But "There's a sucker born every minute".
 
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Milanczar said:
Ugh......please don't use or start using that word. That was a very bad 'Euro' idea.

People there call it the Czech Republic..

Nobody who lives there calls it that unless they want to seem strange or want to hear a negative response. :)
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Czechia was an invention of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs back in the early 90s and approved as an official short form name by the Czech government. Someone there likes it.

But yeah, it is really lame.

Anyway, the days of cheap MN 91/30s and SKS-45s are gone. That goes for pretty much all milsurps whether they are mythical stashes in Ukrainian salt mines or somewhere else. Every country that had/has them knows what they are worth -- or presume them to be sellable for -- and no one is offloading bulk crates for a cup of coffee or a tumbler of vodka.
 
If they have large stocks of ammo they will issue the rifles that
Goes with them! Old semi auto rifles still will do the job!
Garand rifles were surplused out because the ammo ran out in
most places that issued them .
 
PinkyPlinker said:
I see some of this batch have wartime barrels on earlier hex receivers. I wonder if that was done wartime or if they are post war refurb parts jumbles.

Edit - not to say what came before were not parts jumbles... I just haven’t seen that barrel/receiver combo before.
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It's a known (I would say uncommon) set of features. Going theory is that old stock receivers were being used up, but I am not aware of definitive proof that this was the case, rather than scavenging worn out guns.
There was a small number of those sprinkled in previous shipments of MNs.
 
There are plenty of information backed by documents about this and other variations in two books by researcher from Ukraine Alexander Yuschenko. These two books are must have for any serious MN collector (I don't consider myself MN collector, but still find these books very useful).
1. "M91/30 Rifles and M38/M44 Carbines in 1941-1945" Review on Forgotten Weapon. This one is almost impossible to find these days.
2. "Model of 1891/30 Rifle and its Variations. History of Development, Production, Modifications and Use". 700 pages. Link to the publisher web page. This one is unfortunately in Russian, however all illustration captions are in English. There might be translation of this book in the future.
 
Horilka said:
There are plenty of information backed by documents about this and other variations in two books by researcher from Ukraine Alexander Yuschenko. These two books are must have for any serious MN collector (I don't consider myself MN collector, but still find these books very useful).
1. "M91/30 Rifles and M38/M44 Carbines in 1941-1945" Review on Forgotten Weapon. This one is almost impossible to find these days.
2. "Model of 1891/30 Rifle and its Variations. History of Development, Production, Modifications and Use". 700 pages. Link to the publisher web page. This one is unfortunately in Russian, however all illustration captions are in English. There might be translation of this book in the future.
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I don't have either of those unfortunately. Haven't been able to track down the second one yet. One day.
Any chance you could share some knowledge on those iterations?
I don't pretend to be an expert on any family of rifles.
I do know what I like, and I can't lie about it.
 
Well, Cliff Notes version would be that in 1941 and 1942 Izhevsk factory already tapped into previously used receivers that factory had available. And that might have been the end of those curio rifles, however field repair facilities by 1943 accumulated huge numbers of rifles with damaged barrels but intact receivers and suggested to reuse them, both Tula and Izhevsk started accepting those receivers from repair facilities in 1943 on case by case basis and individual agreements. Technically this practice was not approved until 1944 and this is when you can find most of such rifles, now all repair facilities were instructed to ship such rifles to factories and factories were allowed to make new rifles from recycled receivers. For the actual dates and numbers I would refer to above mentioned books.
 
Horilka said:
Well, Cliff Notes version would be that in 1941 and 1942 Izhevsk factory already tapped into previously used receivers that factory had available. And that might have been the end of those curio rifles, however field repair facilities by 1943 accumulated huge numbers of rifles with damaged barrels but intact receivers and suggested to reuse them, both Tula and Izhevsk started accepting those receivers from repair facilities in 1943 on case by case basis and individual agreements. Technically this practice was not approved until 1944 and this is when you can find most of such rifles, now all repair facilities were instructed to ship such rifles to factories and factories were allowed to make new rifles from recycled receivers. For the actual dates and numbers I would refer to above mentioned books.
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Thank you!
I really appreciate this info, and you taking the time to share it.
This sheds some light on the examples I have encountered.
 
I am glad I picked up my 1932 tula mosin a while back from Quebec. the gun is in perfect condition and shoots perfect using cast bullets. I paid 200$ for the gun and glad I got one.
 
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