German Mauser K43 ??

dioltoir

I recently inherited what is supposed to be a German WW2 paratroopers rifle. Has a 10 shot magazine & uses 8mm ammo. I have a box of sharp pointed ammo. The shoulder end of the stock has a small door and inside is a small booklet giving details/instructions/diagrams of the rifle. The # at top is D 1865/2 and all is printed in German. The last page says Berlin, den 11. 5. 44. Numbers in the metal are, 3247 a K43 que 45 3247 a. Both sides of the wood stock has wording or such that I cannot make out. I do not have knowledge of guns and any information will be appreciated, including value, since I want to sell it.
Dan

mark christian

This is not a paratrooper rifle. It is an example of what was intended to have become the standard German semi automatic service rifle- a sort of German M1 Garand. This Walther designed rifle used a gas system which was more or less copied from the Soviet Tokorov Rifle. Around 500,000 of these rifles were produced in two versions starting in late 1943: The G43 and the K43. Your rifle lacks the bolt hold open and optical sight mounting of the G43 and was a more basic rifle. While the design of these rifles was excellent, the over all manufacturing quality left a lot to be desired and the use of contracted "slave labor" was taking a toll on fit, finish, and reliability and it was also not an easy rifle to mass produce. The Walther Factory produced around 330,000 of these rifles in 1944. At that same time the US Springfield Armory alone was producing over 80,000 M1 Garand Rifles each MONTH and nearly 1 million in 1944.

Since you claim to have no real knowledge of firearms I tried to keep this simple and not bore you with too many technical details which would not interest you. If your rifle is complete and original, and it certainly sounds as though it came from an old collection, you have a valuable piece of WWII history which is saught after by collectors. Condition is everything in the firearms game and we would need to know more about what the rifle looks like over all. Is the finish in good shape? Does the wood have gouges or deep scratches? What does the inside of the barrel (the bore) look like? Is it dark (very bad) or shiney (very good)? In typical condition your rifle would retail for $1000 to $1500. The better its condition the higher the price and I have seen excellent condition examples sell for well over $2000. Good luck and thanks for visiting Gun Broker.

Mark T. Christian

rufe-snow

Found a good link, that has many fine pictures of a k 43, for some reason the krauts decided to reidentify the G 43 to K 43 after the start of production.
As Mark said your rifle would be worth big bucks to a collector if it's in factory original, excellent condition.


http://www.angelfire.com/vt/milsurp/k43.html

dioltoir

Mark...rufe....Thank you both for the great info.
Dan

allechalley

Great topic and thanks for info Mark. I had heard about these but didn't know the circumstances. Also, one point, they did pretty good to get any made at all, considering that B24's and everybody else was dumping anything that went 'boom' every so often.