Collector Grade Garands!

[Bodyman]

Notes on 2009 Convention – sorting Garands

I just wanted to give any interested folks a few quick notes on some of what we saw last weekend while working on Garands. My brain is still on overload from all we got to see but let's see if I can relay some of what I saw and some of what I learned.

These were returned from the Greek Air Force (I am betting lots of inter-service joke potential there …)

Many, many, many (did I say 'many'?) near mint rifles with nothing wrong but the trigger group and/or stock were switched. I think a third or more of what I saw was truly excellent like this, and it actually became more unusual to see one with the correct trigger group and stock. As to condition, these could be anything from fairly used to nearly unfired (if not completely unfired). But there were many that were right as rain and nearly unmarked - clearly collector grades. If that holds across the board it means that there were over 6000 rifles that were collector grades or a stock/trigger group away from collector grades.

A good number of the late rifles were rebuilt and reparked with several layers on one pallet having the orange wood sets. Nice and new from rebuild stuff that would please many a shooter, I'm sure.

Rebuilds seemed to be of 2 or 3 types; a very few WWII rebuilds with mostly WWII parts and barrels, early 50's rebuilds with early 50's barrels and parts (I did see an SA open box over O), and later Greek rebuilds of quite fine quality.

I saw no WWII rifles with their original barrels or especially stocks and doubt there was even one substantially original WWII rifle in there. Possibly a barreled receiver but that is about it. If so, I didn't hear about it.

I saw very little of the repaired wood with that almost typical Greek repair (the saw cut with cross-grain inserts to reinforce the grain across a crack). Broken wood was rarely seen - I saw 2 and heard of a few more.

Grease was not as abundant as some of the other Greek shipments, but it was present. Some was what sure looked like axle grease, and some was that really waxy, pinkish stuff that stiffens up until you touch it and move it around. Some was just hardened yellow stuff that didn't move at all.

My shirt will probably not clean up but I pulled it out and it kept the shorts from being completely destroyed.

We have a new award to give - most injured - to one fella who managed to have a Garand bite him on the noggin! I can only imagine him telling the doc to hurry up so he could get back in the game. No M1 thumb but 12 stitches at the hairline is the current record holder.

5.7 million serial range rifles were not 'rare' by any stretch, unless you were speaking of 5.7 HRA's. We saw literally dozens of the only 6100 or so 5.7 SA's (actually the final count was over 300!!), many will probably grade out to collector grade and we saw one at our table that was just drippy mint. Oddly, we saw only one 5.7 HRA.

If you like mint and near mint 5.8 SA's you will be in Nirvana, likewise for late HRA's. The stores will have a nice selection for quite a little while I think.

HRA's with LMR's were not rare by any means in this group - I think our area saw 30 (I saw maybe 8 or 10 personally) and heard of similar stories of others each seeing multiples more. Apparently these have been showing up at the North and South store over the last few years (heck. even I found one last year).

HRA's with SA barrels were non-existent. Zero. Nada. None.

200+ rifles 'so new they were still un-oiled' and had the foil around the muzzles was a sight to make just about anyone weak in the knees. It is suspected that these were in their original cardboard boxes but because overseas shipping rules were changed they could not be shipped with them, so they were removed and palletized with the rest. I think Orest was expecting 30 or so of these from what could be seen thru the plastic, but I think our group handled 40 or 50 itself – at one point we uncovered 3 full levels of them on one pallet, and that was after we had already put a good 20 or so of them up in the racks. The first few caused quite a commotion, but stunning or not, after that they were just in the way (unless you wanted to spend several thousand dollars, and a few folks did just that (and I am jealous - grin)). The only thing I can compare them to are the black and white pictures in Scott's red book of the racks of just finished Garands. Wow.

WWII stuff was limited. I think Orest said the serial numbers indicated 2000. All were rebuilds and many were reparked (though quite nicely). WRA's were all quite rough from what I saw and I doubt there was even one that would grade out at a service grade. Even WRA parts were sparse; I saw one WRA barrel that was worthless as a shooter and one WRA modified oprod. There was too much to do and too much to look at to try to look at them any closer than that, at least the way we were humping and we really struggled to finish at the end of the day.

I saw many excellent late SA’s (I want to say 5.8’s) with equally mint grooved rear handguard clips on them. One or two is odd, while 12 to 15 is more of a “hmmmmm – what is going on here” … I wish I could have slowed down and looked closer.

WWII SA's were much more prevalent but still not many were seen.

This shipment seemed to contain a rather narrow band of late war production, to the exclusion of ranges such as 5.7 HRA’s. Early Korean was not seen at all.

I saw one 4.2 - it was a NM. At one point we had 3 NM's at our table - neat, but too pricey for me (I don’t think I heard of any being bought).

I saw NO 4.3's. Nor did I hear of any.

I saw NO 4.66 HRA's, nor did I hear of any.

I also learned that 5.8 SA's with an IHC part or two are not all that abnormal and some folks down CMP way now consider them correct, though no real research on this has been discussed as far as I know (Wayne???). Nor have I heard of any documentation turning up to say SA got the dregs from IHC production. I saw a 5.8 that was untouched and had an IHC safety in it - it is quite a stretch to think that anybody would have taken it all apart and ONLY put in a safety. I heard of another fella finding one with an IHC trigger group (housing?), as well. As so many trigger groups were off, this was probably not the group of rifles on which to do such research or base any such statements (though according to some, other batches have yielded similar such feedback).

After a while I quit saying; "here goes another collector grade in the boxes", as did everyone else. They were not unusual and it ceased to be funny after the 30th time ...

I did not see of any 6.0 mils, though a small number did turn up.

I heard only a very few IHC's were seen (like 3).

I did hear that 6,100,497 was plucked from the boxes - neat catch as that is 2 below the highest number known to exist. We all speculated as to how high that might auction.

I walked around as much as I could but there was a lot to do. On one of my jaunts I found an absolutely stunning HRA/LMR just sitting on top of a pallet - the stock set was so beautiful that even thru the grease you could see that it was a presentation quality - handguards were a perfect match, too. Though new looking and with that much heralded LMR, I think it TE'd at over 2.5 and ME'd at 2. Odd, but even so, if that didn't go home with someone I would be surprised. But if not someone will be blown away. There were many such fine stocks that I saw.

I saw one DAS stamp upside down. Very neat and quite unusual from what I saw.

I learned that there are 2 different late SA large DAS's, though I haven't a clue where they might properly go.

I learned that HRA's are still boring because they are all so darned consistent and perfect. I would have looked for an LMR but I found one at the North store last year. There are many of these HRA/LMR’s coming down the pipe. I saw many HRA's without the rounded barrel ring at the front of the receiver (when looked at from the left side) - I admit I never really looked but that is a feature of HRA's that always stood out to me (and one that kinda just makes them look 'funky') so that was news to me.

The 'so new they are still dry' rifles with the foil are mostly SA but there are HRA's also. They are stunningly gorgeous. I think Orest was thrilled to see several racks of them at the end of the day. I don't know if there will be any more Greek returns so I don't know if there are more to be found, but as to what I think of the value after handling so many, well I don't want to get folks into trouble with their significant other, but ... boy they are nice. If you want nicer you are fooling yourself as there just isn't.

I heard of one fella turning up a rebuild with a late '40 barrel that was still excellent.

I saw 2 WWII cartouches, barely - GAW and EMcF.

I saw 3 lockbars.

I saw 3 WRA's though I only picked up one myself (didn't buy it, just picked it up ...). One was a really nice looking 146,xxx with an SA WWII barrel. That too went in the box.

I handled a 5.8 NM that was excellent but I think it may have only had a NM barrel. I brought it up and had it graded just for grins and let them put it in the racks reserved for special rifles.

The story of the day was excellence and in quantity - even those at the CMP said they had not seen this level of quality for some time.

Thanks to all those involved for this unique experience - it was a most memorable time for everyone as far as I could tell.

[Charlie59]

Many thanks for your report!

Charlie

[Rick Cummelin]

No notes, but your memory is quite accurate. I pretty much saw what you did with a couple of exceptions:

At least two WWII SAs had their original barrels (neither were found by me), one was a 1941. No idea how they gauged out.

I only saw a handful of rifles with Greek or other non-original wood.

Three types of grease observed: the axle grease and the pink waxy stuff you mentioned, and there was a third type that was pretty thin and easily wiped off. Although all these rifles will likely go through the industrial-grade degreaser we saw on the tour.

The NM rifles I saw on Saturday were in about the same condition as the ones we saw in the South Store on Friday - pretty rough, and only the barrel and maybe a couple of sight parts were marked NM. I'm not sure that NM markings meant anything to the Greeks, or they may have treated them better.

Not that many rifles were actually purchased, and lots of them that were sold were field and rack grades. Perhaps a sign of the economy? I met one gentleman who went home empty-handed. He didn't buy a single rifle.

Great report, and yes, it was a memorable day.

BTW- You can send that award to me ASAP!!!