It came with a neat little tag on it claiming it was brought back from New Guinea by a J. Schmilz (or possible Schmitz). After looking up the museum I came to find out it was ran by a local man in Minnesota who would collect items from locals while he worked as a milk man. Likely he picked this rifle up from a local and that's how he ended up with it. When he passed away his relatives sold off the estate and the museum. Obviously it adds no value, but I find it a neat addition.
The rifle itself is a Tokyo Artillery Arsenal Type 38 in the 1,040,000 range. It has a mismatched firing pin, floor plate, and safety, but everything else that I have seen, including the stock and the dust cover is correct. Assembly under is 739 under the wood. The safety and firing pin actually have the same assembly number.
As a nice bonus the mum is also still intact. Stock is a bit rough, but there are still some nice visible cartouches on the wrist of it. The screw holding the two tangs in place is frozen up real good, and I may end up needed to drill it out to get the magazine out. There is a lot of active rust under there I'd like to take care of.
It also came with a nice original Type 38 leather sling. It's really not in too bad of a shape, but there's some cracking where it was bent while attached to the rifle all these years. Debating if I'll keep it off the rifle or reattach it once I've completely finished the cleaning job.
Overall it's a neat rifle that I fell I got for a good price. Nice to find a matching dust cover on an earlier rifle like this one. I've guessing the 3 mismatched parts happened during service. The floor plate is a common one in my experience, but I also have a nearly all matching early Type 38 with a mismatched firing pin, so maybe that happened occasionally too.
Thanks for looking!
