Wednesday North Store visit

A friend, my son, and I drove up to the North Store from Maryland Tuesday, stayed overnight, and were at the store around 8:30am on Wednesday. I was quite surprised to see 25 cars in the lot when we arrived. The place was absolutely packed all morning. I counted 55 patrons at one point and it took an hour and 45 minutes to check out.

Not much in the line of 03A3s which I was hoping to buy so I looked over the carbines. There was a nice bunch of IBMs, Inlands, Underwoods, and NPMs. There was even a rack of Winchesters. I found a super clean NPM with a WWII Underwood stock that had my name on it.

There was also a good selection of Garands, especially HRAs. A friend bought an absolutely superb HRA that only needs a bolt to be totally correct. It was better than the collector grades I used to see a couple of years ago.

There were also a number of 1917 salvage grades. Externally these rifles were generally very nice, but the barrels were terrible.

We also left with some ammo. All in all it was a great trip - I just wish I had more money.

That's good to hear. As soon as I'm off unemployment I'm gettin' myself another Garand (lack of income crimps my style when making purchases, unfortunately.)

Mike Doerner

What were the Barreled Receivers looking like?

I'm afraid that the barreled receivers weren't too hot. Nearly everyone of them had rust and pitting. While I didn't look through a lot of barrels the ones I did look through were pretty bad. Also, the data on the receiver heels was very weak in a number of cases.

Thanks for that report Jim...

Jeff