You're right, the '40 Tula is a rare find. Maybe it is in the same ballpark, despite being a refurb and not having the original first pattern stock? It's a great rifle, regardless. Thanks for sharing the photos!
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You're right, the '40 Tula is a rare find. Maybe it is in the same ballpark, despite being a refurb and not having the original first pattern stock? It's a great rifle, regardless. Thanks for sharing the photos!
The reason the Izhevsk M38 went for what it did was due to the first pattern stock, and the fact that it is as original as one could hope, bar the non-matching bolt. Examples such as this are listed with a rarity of '10/10' on 7.62x54r.net. I actually won that M38, here are some high-rez pics for comparison.
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../01/n1tc-1.jpg https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../01/vg49-1.jpg https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../01/o94x-1.jpg
Refurbed or not, I think that the feature that matters is that it's a 1940 Tula; I would say, keep it for at least a few decades! I've been looking for production numbers with no luck... Total production (1940 plus 1944) is apparently around 50,000, but what proportion of this is 1940?
Lou