Came across this Arisaka type 38 for sale locally, any Japanese Milsurps are very hard to come by in Canada and usually fetch a "pretty penny". This one here is a Koishikawa arsenal with serial 1337XXX placing it likely in the 20's. Stock appears to have a crack to the front lower handguard, mum is ground and is missing the cleaning rod, otherwise all matching SN and still in working order from what he tells me. He is asking 400$CAD which reflects condition as a mint example will fetch upwards of 2g's. Seeing as i dont fancy spending thousands to complete a Japanese small arms collection I dont mind a lower end example until I can upgrade later down the road.
My biggest question tho is why does the stock have a large "9" ingraved into it. He seems to believe some units marked the off caliber Arisakas when the 7.7 arisaka became more popular? which also brings up, should I change the furniture on it as well?
Likely meeting him thursday to take a closer look and decide, was planning on talking him down closer to 300.
Thanks
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