Went to a gun show today

[Niner]

Very few C&R guns. Lots of pistols. Lots of imported black rifles... lots .22 caliber. Some strange ducks... alleged French Resistance Enfields for instance. "Paratrooper" spelled partroper SKS rifles that probably never got on a plane and came from China by slow boat. A few other SKS variants with Chinese, no airborne rangers apparently ever owned them, for $500 and one that may have been a Russian for $850. High price bitser M1 Garand carbines with variations in price for little apparent reason other than receiver arsenal ....but all Garand Carbines are bitsers come to think of it. There were two Turk Mausers for $450 as an offer. Very few Nagants. $475 Arisaka that looks only slightly better than my less than $100 example. Bit of a laugh in a sign...NO BACKGROUND CHECK REQUIRED with ...very small letters under... with Alabama CCW.

The summation of the adventure is that C&R guns are out of the pipeline. Anybody that has got them, like me, are holding on to them like a better investment than the stock market.

$10 to get into the place.

[DuncaninFrance]

I wonder how he knew they were from the French Resistance?
I would suggest that 'Matching Numbers' is the first giveaway. High quality rifles would go to regular British troops. A lot of the rifles sent were marked D - Drill Only and would have been checked to a lower safety standard.
Lastly, the wood looks too good to be true!!

[Niner]

I agree. Look at the US. Property Savage in line with them. The lend lease rifle is considered a couple hundred more at $1450 asking price. The British might have given that US made one to the French as the rifle was made with a few short cuts in the Enfield design. I paid $132.28 for mine in 2001. Pretty good advance in value....if the sellers imagination were truly market value.

[Niner Delta]

That para SKS obviously belonged to a part time cowboy, hence the "part roper". Would you happen to remember the
price of the HK 91? Hard to tell but it looks like it might be one of the many clones made by several companies.
There have been no gun shows around here for years, another downside of living in rural area.
Thanks for the photos, good to see at least something is going on around your area.
I saw in one photo that someone had the Stars and Bars flying. ..



.

[Niner]

Have no idea what the HK91 was going for.... didn't even know what it was by name or history so wasn't paying any attention. The Stars and Bars wasn't the only thing with a decided "the South is going to rise again" flavor there. Lots of ammo there but all of it was pricey. $10 for a Garand clip of 8 rounds of 30.06 for instance.

There were lots of pistols there and there were lots of people buying them. One dealer had a sign that if you bought one of his inventory of hundreds of different pistols you could buy a $120 small automatic that looked to be about .22 caliber and came from God knows what foreign country in addition. The Mosins were about not existent although not all that many years ago there were plenty of them. There were less than a handful of non full auto AK's that I noticed. The former great numbers of black guns in standard military calibers weren't there but instead were lots and lots of .22 caliber look likes. I saw one old fashion AR15 with a Colt sticker that had the old Vietnam fore grips. I think it was something like $2000.

[Aughnanure]

I’m thinking French Resistance may be a super hard variety of wax polish.

[Niner]

Yeah, kind of like Renaissance wax that is a pretty good finish wax preserver that supposedly originated with the British Museum in England.