French Mas 49 Sniper

I am usually HIGHLY SKEPTICAL whenever I see these "French Sniper Rifles", especially the 49/56's. I recall when a lot of the sniper scopes were brought in, probably late 80's, early 90's, and they were NOT all that expensive. The guns had been coming in a little while and were still pretty reasonable.

So one sticks a cheap surplus import scope on a fairly cheap surplus rifle (total investment in 1990's-$600-$700?) and all of a sudden, you have a $3,000 SNIPER RIFLE.

Honestly, I never had enough background in French rifles to know which are and how to tell, but I was highly suspicious of those that kept popping up in the following years since.