91/30 value by production year

[fernleaf]

Letter prefixes to Mosin Serial numbers started being used in 1938, before this they only had numbers that started at "1" on 1st January and kept going up sequentially until 31st December.

Izhevsk made 30,000 M91/30s in 1930, so that's an average of about 80 per day. Any Izhevsk 1930 dated M91/30 with a serial number of less than 2000 would certainly have been made in the first month of that years production.

Would that add value?? Probably not.

[WarPig1976]

Interesting, Do you have a reference Fern?

[fernleaf]

I was waiting to be asked that..... does no one trust anyone anymore??!!

But yes, I do..... an article by a man who knows an awful lot about Mosins, and has written a book or two on the subject.....

The Last Dragoon Rifle

Anyone who is interested in Mosins should be fully conversant with the entire site! It is no doubt the best reference available in English.

[WarPig1976]

No worries friend it's not a matter of trust just the quest for knowledge... I'm aware of the site, looked again and can't find the article, can you link to it or is it found in one of those book thingies you speak of..

[fernleaf]

The link is in my post above, but here it is again: The Last Dragoon Rifle

[WarPig1976]

Pulled from Mosin Nagant.net.

4. Numbers

Up to the year 1937 the serial numbering system of the Czarist era was continued, which means, rifles started with serial number one every year. There are no numbers with more than six digits. Tula used the German influenced, as my Russian friend told me, "No." in front of the numbers, Izhevsk did not.


Beginning 1938 the system of numbering changed. Serial numbers still began the year numbered from one, but now with a Cyrillic character (like KH-proof55.jpg (32616 bytes)) as a prefix, followed by one to five numerals. After making 99.999 rifles the Soviets used two Cyrillic characters (like KH-proof54.jpg (26186 bytes)), followed by up to four numerals. There was no system in using the Cyrillic characters, which had the purpose to code the production data. The same way of numbering is found on the carbines M1938 and later M1944.

Ok, learned something new.