no bidders ?

[Marcus]

A lot of the Mosins that don't show signs of repeated heavy Soviet post-war refurbing came out of Romania in the 1990s and then Albania in the very late 1990's and early 2000's. Some of these were rifles the Soviets supplied late in WW2 or immediately there after, and these escaped the massive post-war Soviet refurb and update programs.

Others, which were more extensively refurbished, were supplied later in the Soviet era, or gradually worked their way down from the Soviet Union through the various Warsaw Pact nations to Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania, which were the poorest Socialist nations and could not afford new, state of the art, equipment. Also, places like this were not on the potential front lines of any possible East-West conflict like Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, so these weapons were more for maintaining internal order and security (oppressing their own people) and were condidered adequate for this task.

This carbine would have most likely come out of Albania in the early 2000's after the supply of Mosins in Romania was depleted.

I owned a few TG imported M38 carbines that were in outstanding condition....these are popular with collectors because of the condition and high degree of originality of many of them, as well as the less offensive import marks.

By the way, if anyone wants to see another real nice M38 in a laminated stock - this one an early laminated birch M44 stock - check out GWilly's message thread "First M38 to be added to the collection", which I just brought up current. This is another of these TG imports and was formerly one of the stars in my collection before GWilly bought it from me last year.

[drabnor]

Learn something new every day! Thanks for the info Marcus!