Unertl Sniper

[Brian Dick]

Well, I stand corrected on my rifle. I've sent some pictures and Steve has been quite helpful. it has some definite discrepancies that rule it out as a legit MC41. Luckily, I didn't pay a fortune for it and the telescope and case are exceptional and legit. My luck hasn't been too good with USMC sniping equipment. I bought an MC1 from an estate in Florida with a Kollmorgen scope many years ago that was faked by a shop in Summerville, SC. It was a perfectly legit M1C and sported a perfectly legit telescope but had forged paperwork which I was suspicious of from the start when I saw where it had been originally purchased. Bob did a story on it in the GCA journal. As I told Steve, I'm no authority on USMC sniping equipment. I have two legit, original 1903A4 rifles, a restored M1C and an M1D won from a CMP lottery in 1999. I also have an M24SWS that I lost my mind and ordered from the Remington LE/Military shop in 2005. It's an absolute hammer and I'm glad i bought it when i did because Remington's QC slipped considerably not long afterwards when the company was sold. Other than that, I'll stick to my No.4Mk.1T and L42A1 rifles which i know a fair bit about!

[cplstevennorton]

I was trying to find it, because it was a killer document, but I don't know where I put it. But I did find this one series of docs on the stargauge, which is a close second. But I wanted to find the first one because it told how much the Marines paid for their star gauge in 1928 as it was a substantial amount of money. I forget how much it was, but I remember it being a lot for what you normally see paid for tooling back then.

These Stargauges must have been rare as Frankford made a big deal of making 5, one of which went to the Marines and the other 4 went into storage.

But this was a cost saving tool for the Marines. With the gauge they could check their own barrels and save money from buying them off SA. Even though these were government agencies, these docs always read like two businesses buying off each other. The barrels that SA star gauged cost more than normal barrels.

So for instance in 1928, the Marines bought 10,000 standard barrels off SA. They with the tool could pick through those barrels and select the best ones. I'm not sure exactly what it means, because I've never seen the tool in use. But the Marines were always looking for barrels that gauged as close to .308 as possible. That is always the number I see when they talk about selecting the best ones with the star gauge.

But here is the doc. When I run across how much they paid the next time I see it, I will come back and edit it. But I remember it being like $300 or $500 or something like that. In comparison a National Match M1903 was about $40 at the time. So that was one expensive tool! In fact I think that is about a new car price back then for a new Ford.

[cplstevennorton]

It was a perfectly legit M1C and sported a perfectly legit telescope but had forged paperwork which I was suspicious of from the start when I saw where it had been originally purchased. Bob did a story on it in the GCA journal.

It's always the hardest emails I write as it's never a fun thing to say. Speaking of fake paperwork. Someone just bought a Unertl Sniper off Rock Island with a faked document pretty much like you describe. They took one of the sales documents from the M1952 Snipers that the Quantico Museum traded in 1970, and superimposed a M1903A1 Unertl rifle serial and description. It wasn't a good fake at all, as you could tell the writing was done with a computer and not a typerwriter as the originals. But it still brought $40,000.

I had informed the original seller of the rifle before it went to auction, the paperwork was fake, and the rifle was a clone. But it still went to the RIA auction as real, and the current owner tracked me down after to show me his prize.

That was the hardest email I have ever wrote in my life. He had 40k in that rifle.

It's very, very sad that people do this. I couldn't sleep at night if I did that to people...

[Bob Seijas]

Did I read someplace that SA charged $1 a barrel to gauge them? Another of those things you "know" without remembering how In any case, that would make $500 for the star gauge a real bargain if you just bought 10,000 barrels.

[speckles]

Its hard to say thanks to that steve. But for those that read this thread with an open mind realize that everything is a fake until proven otherwise, I guess. Very nice to have folks like you who can help define the real new normal...

It's always the hardest emails I write as it's never a fun thing to say. Speaking of fake paperwork. Someone just bought a Unertl Sniper off Rock Island with a faked document pretty much like you describe. They took one of the sales documents from the M1952 Snipers that the Quantico Museum traded in 1970, and superimposed a M1903A1 Unertl rifle serial and description. It wasn't a good fake at all, as you could tell the writing was done with a computer and not a typerwriter as the originals. But it still brought $40,000.

I had informed the original seller of the rifle before it went to auction, the paperwork was fake, and the rifle was a clone. But it still went to the RIA auction as real, and the current owner tracked me down after to show me his prize.

That was the hardest email I have ever wrote in my life. He had 40k in that rifle.

It's very, very sad that people do this. I couldn't sleep at night if I did that to people...

[MoMallard]

Steve:

Many thanks for all your research. There are not that many left in the internet age that provide sound and fact based observation and conclusion vs. the ever present loudest troll in the room, standard mythological information. Many of us are patient and quiet observers who do differentiate "good vs. evil" but recuse themselves from the online fights. Perhaps we should trumpet louder and minimize the deafening silence that Bob refers to above. I had a statistician friend that used to tag his emails "In God We Trust, All Others Bring Data". You sir, bring the data to light.