Proliferation means less value. How is that ?

[Sentryduty]

I believe the Mosin Nagant (MN) values are somewhat temporary, mainly because the Warsaw pact countries have just flooded the markets by offloading their war stocks, and for pennies per pound of rifle by the looks of it.

Just free-fall thinking on this, with no actual numbers to back it up:

My basic MN rifle was a parts bin special, and cost $130 CDN, it is a Russian built rifle that I suspect was liquidated through the Ukraine before their recent geo-political struggles. Now, in most industry every time a product changes hands there is at least a 20% markup for profit. In automotive parts this margin is 35%-50% markup as a reference.

At the retailer, let assess they made 20% profit call it $26

Meaning they bought it for $104, let's only assume one importer/distributor who gets their 20% as well for round figures, say $20.

This puts a out the door of the arsenal price at $84, but each of these rifles underwent a basic refurbishment, which costs manpower, parts, overhead, and time delays of selling the product at market, for everyone to be paid and still make profit, we could assess that these rifles might only have cost the "Refurb Factory" $30-$50 each, and were almost certainly bought by the crate/truck/boxcar load.

In the middle of this, every time that single rifle changed hands, there was a shipping cost, and shipping is never free, each time it would be incrementally factored into the "snowballing" price of each MN rifle. These aren't exactly a "farm to table" product, they would have been shipped a number of times to find their way above your mantle.

Given the sheer volume of basic rifles that were being sold off only a small margin above their scrap metal value it is no surprise that these guns are arriving at market at a very low retail cost. There is nearly zero market for these guns from a military sense, which is where the real money is in international sales of firearms, contracts are the bread and butter of arms manufacture. The collector, hobby, and sportsman market does have a huge potential, but they are not guaranteed sales, so the product must very attractively priced to unload the volume in a timely fashion.

The MN is a good rifle, but the market is flooded with them right now, in much the same way all surplus guns were after the closeout of WW2 and into the 1960's, give it enough time, and the MN will become more valuable as they become less common. No one is making new ones, seems not even the Khyber pass, so they will only become incrementally less common as the years go on. Which reminds me, I have to grab a MN Sniper for my collection before they get priced out of my range.

Overall the MN rifle is a serviceable piece of equipment, but they are "good enough" to do the job, simple, and durable, but there were some things that I find are lacking in the design when compared against the contemporaries. For example, while accurate, the light profile barrel does start to open the groups when the rifle fires more than a few strings in succession. It would still be good enough in a combat role to hit an enemy soldier even when quite hot, but it wouldn't take home the Queen's Medal even on the best of days. I have a number of Soviet firearms in my collection and I appreciate their strengths and weaknesses respectively.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.