Wednesday North Store visit

[Jim S.]

A friend, my son, and I drove up to the North Store from Maryland Tuesday, stayed overnight, and were at the store around 8:30am on Wednesday. I was quite surprised to see 25 cars in the lot when we arrived. The place was absolutely packed all morning. I counted 55 patrons at one point and it took an hour and 45 minutes to check out.

Not much in the line of 03A3s which I was hoping to buy so I looked over the carbines. There was a nice bunch of IBMs, Inlands, Underwoods, and NPMs. There was even a rack of Winchesters. I found a super clean NPM with a WWII Underwood stock that had my name on it.

There was also a good selection of Garands, especially HRAs. A friend bought an absolutely superb HRA that only needs a bolt to be totally correct. It was better than the collector grades I used to see a couple of years ago.

There were also a number of 1917 salvage grades. Externally these rifles were generally very nice, but the barrels were terrible.

We also left with some ammo. All in all it was a great trip - I just wish I had more money.

[mdoerner]

That's good to hear. As soon as I'm off unemployment I'm gettin' myself another Garand (lack of income crimps my style when making purchases, unfortunately.)

Mike Doerner

[Joe Boyd]

What were the Barreled Receivers looking like?

[Jim S.]

I'm afraid that the barreled receivers weren't too hot. Nearly everyone of them had rust and pitting. While I didn't look through a lot of barrels the ones I did look through were pretty bad. Also, the data on the receiver heels was very weak in a number of cases.

[U.S.G.I.]

Thanks for that report Jim...

Jeff