I am new to milsurp hobby, but was curious why these Mosins are so low in cost? Are they not accurate shooters? Do they have a higher occurrence of defects? Or is the answer that there are so many of them after the fall of USSR?
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Last edited by Aurelius; 09-30-2010 at 12:14 AM.
Reason: message was clipped; I shortened it
Personally I am a huge fan of the M91/30. It was the first in my WWII collection. The reason they are so cheap is simple. They were brought in to the country a few years back by the millions and thats what made them so cheap. If you are a collecter however, cheap is usually not good. I have one in beautiful condition with all serial numbers matching. It is a 1943r with serial number 20X. It is a really low serial number considering they made almost 350,000 that year. As far as the shooting goes, I shoot mine out at the range all the time and it has become very easy to shoot 300 meters open sights at 1 foot by 1 foot 1/4" plate steel. This is with cheap surplus ammo. Ive seen an older gentleman that I was good friends with shoot a 55 gal. oil drum at 900 meters open sights (3rd shot) with the same ammo. The defects are low as they are inspected before import. The main problem seems to be getting all of the jelled grease(cosmoline) cleaned out of each nook and craney. They make for a cheap fun shooter and i would definitly reccomend buyng one. Hope this helps with some of your questions.
In addition to the large quantities that are available, I'd add that the design is very simple and the external appearance is somewhat plain.
But they are strong rifles, good shooters and because of the simple design, fairly problem free.
Prices will probably start going up when the supply runs out. I would never expect them to go as high as most of the other WWII era surplus rifles though.
Original non-reworked specimens already command a bit of a premium. Plus, have you checked the prices on some of the scarcer Finn variants lately? The plain vanilla reworks and mismtched rifles will never be all that valuable. You must learn the fine art of Mosin snobbery...Say, the price of an original 91/30 pre-war sniper. Or an original complete French built '91.
That's kind of what I thought, that there were so many of them dumped on the market. On the other hand, I have a camera made in Ukraine made after the fall of USSR and mechanically it is pretty bad. Optics are fine though. So I thought perhaps the rifles had mechanical problems. However, yours was made in 1943, and many seem to be from The Great War, so quality had to be good back then. What do you do to get the cosmoline off? I have a mauser that I need to clean that is all syruped up with the stuff. I was going to try the steam cleaning method, but wasn't sure if it was good for the wood and/or metal. Your opinion?
First thing you want to do to get rid of the grease is to remove all the metal from the wood so you don't have to worry about the metal. I get a big ziplock baggie and put all the small pieces in there.
As for the wood, depends if it's wood or laminated wood. Laminates you want to be less aggressive with as they can separate. My favorite for getting cosmoline out is to put the stock on the dashboard of my truck, with plenty of papers underneath it and the window facing the sun. It's a gentle heat but plenty hot to get the grease to pour out of it. 3 or 4 days of that and it's pretty dry. I then spray it with a spot remover or grease remover, K2R is my favorite for this.
Other methods that work for those in more of a hurry are oven cleaners. Some guys put the wood in their ovens if they fit. I don't recommend this one as you can too easily char the wood. What I did with my Mosin Nagants is I built a small enclosed cardboard box that the stock would fit completely in. I then put the box on top of a pair of portable radiators and left the heat draw it out. Didn't work quite as nice as the dashboard but in the winter, you do what you have to do. Don't leave them unattended, probably a bit of a fire hazard.
Comrade, the reason Mosin Nagant rifles so cheap is cunning Communist plot! Glorious workers of mighty Soviet Union make millions of Mosin Nagant! When sold as "surplus" into decadent capitalist West, heroic proletarian milsurp collectors will realize inherent superiority of Soviet design and engineering, rise up, and demand socialist innovations like centralized planning, collective farming, and daily vodka issue at work! Revolution will follow whereever Mosin Nagant is spread! Comrades, join the heroic comrade soldiers of Red Army Choir in rousing chorus of Hymn Of the Soviet Union!
Seriously, though, Mosins are as cheap as they are because the Soviets made them by the metric boatload. They made tens of millions of them during the second War alone. And then the USSR collapsed, and they started selling them off for foreign currency.
Ah yes! All those rifles to repel the Hun invader, of course . . . thanks for the very entertaining piece of cinematic excellence, a la Eisenstein. ha ha ha. I do think I'll pick up one of these sooner or later. They look elegantly simple, and a good bargain as well.
I don't think these Mosins are coming in from Russia but from the break away republic of the Ukraine. They have been strapped for cash in any form and had many thousands of these rifles sitting in warehouses doing nothing for them and so sold them to us for our pleasure and they got much needed US dollars for them. A win win all around which I am sure has ****ed off Puttin in mother Russia.
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