Do you think the price or Russian small arms will rise ?

[Chris]

Hi Banksy - One must always listen to ones Mum. When I bought my first SKS my mum sat with me and loaded up 1500 loose rounds into stripper clips. Said it reminded her of her years in the army during WW2. She operated a 'Predictor' for an Ak Ak (anti aircraft) battery in Portsmouth.

Here's a picture of one of her Grandson's of whom she is most proud, down at the range on a Sunday afternoon - cuddling a Chinese type 56S.

[SVaaka]

Hi
In my opinion we should keep pre/during WW I russian arms and ex-sovjet arms in different categories. Cause there are many eagerly sought russian ( first category ) arms and those like some variations of even plain ordinary Mosin-Nagant rifle that will have great rise of value ( forinstance those made by Remington and Chatellerault ) and also very rare Fedorov-automaticrifle and most likely some odd variations of Mosin-Nagat rifle like m/07. Also foregin guns adopted by Russian government like FN Mle 1903, Colt m/1911, Madsen lmg. Even plain ordinary singleaction Nagant m/1895 of late manufacture is quite hard to find. What comes to Sovjet arms - meaning made during Sovjet regime, they are not "russian" arms but Sovjet. Anyway there are some sovjet guns which either have a really high prices even today and which price one can expect to rise. In my opinion such would be Simonov and Tokarev automaticrifles, Tulski-Korovin automaticpistols. One could expect some early model Tokarev-pistols also have some sort of rise in their value. Of newer production only Stetshkin-pistol I would imagine to have such value.
According to my experience most sovjet guns were made so poorly and in such numbers that guns like late manufactured Nagant-revolver has only value in huge collection of Nagants of different variations or complete collection of WW II Sovjet handguns - but only as a part of it where most of it´s value come from guns round it. Ofcourse salesmen can put pricetags what ever they like to such guns - but it does not rise their actual value or historical importance. Compare one made in Tsarist-time and one made in 1944 - see the difference.