In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
Options
8mm mauser seems aweful cheap
JnRockwall
Member Posts: 16,350 ✭✭✭
Is there a surplus 8mm rifle out there on the cheap, like the mosins or similar?
Comments
Is there a surplus 8mm rifle out there on the cheap, like the mosins or similar?
I believe you can still find M48s and VZ24s for a decent price still. RC K98s too.
For quite a long time military surplus 8mm Mauser was one of the cheapest centerfire ammos around, perhaps THE cheapest for rifle ammo.
I still have a few cans of the steel-case Romanian 8mm from AIM surplus from the first Obama gun panic four years ago. For years they had this for $90 per 380 round spam can, with shipping included. (So that's $0.24 a round shipped to your door). And even that was pretty expensive for the round, historically speaking. Maybe ten years ago, you could still find this stuff for $0.10 a round.
The Romanian appears to have all dried up now, and I think most (but not all) of the other military surplus ammo supplies have dried up too. There is still plenty of the stuff out there (Yugo, Turkish, Persian, etc), but I think at this point you'd be lucky to find it at under $0.30/round.
For the performance you get. . .which is better than a .308. . .that's still a bargain. But its not like the "bad" old days when this stuff was virtually free! (And remember, all surplus 8mm is corrosive).
In terms of guns. . .there were a gazillion military 8mm Mauser bolt action rifles made, and there are tons of them still around.
While the prices of the real McCoy WWII German Mausers (even the forced match Russian capture rebuilds) have shot through the ceiling, there are still plenty of surplus Yugo M48 and 24/47 rifles out there in the $250 price range, and some of these are basically unfired guns pulled out of storage and sold as surplus.
Again, for what you get (a European built blued steel and hardwood bolt action military grade rifle) the price is still not bad.