My Worse CHICOM SKS purchase ever.

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Originally Posted by Boris Badinov

Not from Vietnam. From Albania. This has been pretty well known, and documented since the first imports in 2012.

Firearms researcher and author, Steve Kehaya, went to Albania working for Century Arms Importers in 2010-2011 to begin the selection of early bladed carbines for the first US shipments. He's a member at gunboards.com forum, where he has described in great detail and with photos his experiences finding and selecting the Chinese Type56's from the Albanian military stockpiles.

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Thank you sir! Definitely learned something today!!

Usabaker, if you get her cleaned up you'll be able to get your money back (and possibly more), if you sell locally in California.

400 for an SKS is the extreme low end of the sks price range in Covid Cali.

If you wait til November it could fetch even more money.

It may not be the prettiest carbine, but the ugly ones commonly are perfectly functioning rifles beneath all the grime.

I prefer the "been there, done that" look for my milsurps. I'd clean it and shoot it first.
RE: CF's customer service. Just played that game with the Type 54 Tok's they just got in. The one they sent me doubled 3 times with the first mag load. Emailed them and had a return label in my inbox an hour later. Maybe they felt bad as the replacement was in much nicer condition.

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Originally Posted by TankerDon

RE: CF's customer service. Just played that game with the Type 54 Tok's they just got in. The one they sent me doubled 3 times with the first mag load. Emailed them and had a return label in my inbox an hour later. Maybe they felt bad as the replacement was in much nicer condition.

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You are lucky, They did not even respond to me.

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Originally Posted by Boris Badinov

Usabaker, if you get her cleaned up you'll be able to get your money back (and possibly more), if you sell locally in California.

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Hi Boris, Thanks to you I now know the story behind these rifles and have decided to keep it only cleaning it up, maybe a rust blue. Prior to finding out the history, I was going to parkerize it, now that's off the table. I understand what you are saying about the value in Californa (I saw a kid pay 1200.00 for a beat-up Yugo SKS two months ago,) but as far as on-line ordering goes, it still was not worth what I paid.

I found this information which matches the info you gave me.

"Surplus Chinese Type 56 SKS Rifle 7.62×30. These are Vietnam era Chinese Military rifles made by Jianshe Arsenal AKA “Factory 26”. These rifles are currently banned from importation by the US government, but this lot of SKS’s was granted a waiver because they spent the last 20 years in Albania. These rifles came out of Albania, and 20 years ago would put them in that part of the world for the Kosovo war. According to some research the Kosovo Liberation Army received and used arms from China, and the Type 56 SKS was one of the weapons they used. There is trench art and writing on some of these rifles that it is written using the latin alphabet, not Chinese characters."

Thank you again Boris for all the information.

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Originally Posted by usabaker

These rifles came out of Albania, and 20 years ago would put them in that part of the world for the Kosovo war. According to some research the Kosovo Liberation Army received and used arms from China, and the Type 56 SKS was one of the weapons they used.

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See, my battalion was posted there through the winter of '92. These were classic of what we were seizing and finding. That was before they started making their own...so we saw lots.

I was able to contact the Importer and they confirmed that these rifles came form Albania.

Classic Firearms Field Grade.
Attachment 110917

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Originally Posted by fleetwrench

Classic Firearms Field Grade.
Attachment 110917

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You forgot the guy spraying them with a fire hose and the other guy throwing salt on them......

Found another batch of these Albanian Chinese Type 56 SKS's for sale here in California and Arizona. They are selling them for $500.00! holy molly ... One of the guys I work with at the range work there and is going to check out the condition of the rifles they have. If they have one in Vary Good or better condition its going to be hard to say no.