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Just picked up a very good to excellent condition all matching, non re-furbished metal work, but stock appears refinished, 1940 M38 Tula with a low 3 digit serial number and in a true M38 hardwood stock.
Can anybody comment on how many of these are about in this condition?
Need some pics!
Will get some together.Quote:
Originally Posted by Anzac15
I am in Georgia, and I practically live at the gun shows. And I can tell you that I rarely see any M38s at all, much less unrefurbed. I would have to jump on one of those if I ran into one. Good find!
Well got the camera battery charged up and took some pics, hope they show enough detail!
The sling cutouts seem to be of somewhat later style, but don't hold me to it. The lack of metal in the rear slot is more common on rifles built after the Nazi invasion in the summer of '41, but I'm not sure when such changes were actually adopted.
M38 carbines definitely aren't too common!
Wow, people went crazy on this carbine, and it is not even a Tula!
Tula only made the M38 for 2 years - 1940 and 1944. 1940's are the harder of the 2 to find.
That carbine was a quite different than the OP's. It was an original condition (non-refurb) with the correct first pattern stock. Very uncommon.Quote:
Originally Posted by owengun
The OP's is still a very nice uncommon example, but not in it's original stock and obviously refurbished by the arsenal. Not really in the same ballpark for price.
Correct me if I am wrong but from what I understand there is only one other 1940 Tula M38 known in North America, while there are numerous examples of Ishvesk M38's that are un-refurbed floating about. When did a 1940 Tula M38 ever come up for sale in the past?Quote:
Originally Posted by jjjxlr8
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