Telescopes M73B1 on ebay

[JGaynor]

Gloca, virtually all M73B1's can be considered correct for the M1903A4. I say virtually all because we know some of them saw military service in other applications such as optical collimators for 20MM Naval machine guns. The other qualification is that in recent years a handful of M73B1's have been sold still in their original Weaver factory packaging. The outer wraps had the names of the quality control inspectors and manufacturing dates in 1945. This was probably six months after the last A4 was shipped from Remington and nearly a year after the last rifles were assembled. I suspect these lat M73B1's entered the spare parts stream. Many were undoubtedly installed on rifles in later years. The few still in factory packaging are the real rare birds.

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[gioca]

Jim, what about the bidder that on ebay offered $501 more for the scope with the serial # in the range of 15,xxx rather than that with the serial# 33,xxx?
Maybe that bidder wanted to match a rifle M1903A4 in original conditions with a scope with a "believable" serial number. Once that the rifles are no more original their matching with the scopes is a lot easier!

@Promo
Probably already now you can make more money selling separately the parts rather than as a whole assembly. IMO it is easier to sell the scope without the rifle rather than the rifle without the scope!

[JGaynor]

Gloca all we can do here is render judgment and educated guesses on values based on the latest auction, gunshow or dealer sale. In my first post i suggested that i would have expect a price of around $1200.~ In the final analysis one guy paid a little less and one guy paid a bit more.
The M73B1's are scare items, the total quantity out there is finite and none have been made in nearly 70 years.
So it's a sellers market. The guy with the later scope probably let it go too low. For some reason lt of people in these gun auctions seem to have some sort of allergy to using a reserve price. non compose mantis.

Regards,
Jim