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When the going gets tough. Get a G98, turn down the receiver ring, add trigger parts, barrel and stock, and you have a K98. And Heinz goes off to work with grossvater's shooting iron. With the same results. It may have been re-serialized, thats an awfull small number for a G98 in 1916.
Mauser serial numers were only 4 digits, started over with a 1 and a suffix (or prefix) at 10,000. Also started over with year change.
I am pretty sure that serial number was put on somewhere other than a Gerrman arsenal. Like by someone who found that a K.98k would bring more bucks than a rusty G.98. When it was realized that removing the serial number might be a little illegal, a number was put on.
Jim
Receiver was heavily buffed to get rid of serious rust. Doesn't look like German arsenal re-stamping. Interesting one, for sure.
It does not look stamped. It looks like it was very carefully engraved. Somebody humped it.
OK, what does the 44 D 8 on the barrel mean ?
The "barrel band" gives all the barrel's manufacturer data. You will have to the barreled receiver out of the stock to see the entire data.
Just a bubba gun. No turning of the receiver needed as the gew98 and 98k are identical dimensionally... unless of course it's been belt sanded to hell and a spurious number applied as in this case. Plus when gew98's were built into 98k's they had blued receivers , not modern belt sanded bright metal fare.
I agree with gew98 and JimK. It has the same giveaways as often found on Khyber pass Martinis - the number has been applied in an amateur fashion, and the date and name are not properly aligned. See the Ball and Olson books for plenty of correct examples.
Patrick