MilsurpDan
Ultimate Member
Went to my first live auction Saturday morning at a local venue. Most of the stuff there was equipment and tools but there was several guns there. Most of it was sporting rifles or complete junk, but there was a couple gems there in the form of German Gew. 98 rifles. Even those didn't look very good though, but I've been neglecting to get one so I figured I'd see if I could grab them for cheap. The competition didn't look very fierce before the auction, seemed like mostly a mix of bubba and good ol' country boys except for one obvious gun dealer who I saw looking over the stuff early on and talking to someone over the phone about them. I laughed at one point when I saw a guy looking at the older stuff and say something to the effect of "why would anybody want to buy a gun that's over 50 years old?"
Anyway, the dealer I saw looking over the stuff beforehand put up some resistance over the Gew 98's and beat me on two of them. I thought I'd won the decent all matching Amberg but instead I won the mismatched Spandau I didn't want that much which kinda made me mad. I won an all matching Mauser Oberndorf though, but it was the ugliest looking one out of the 4. Turned out to have a great surprise with it though. I was also a little annoyed that I had to go pay the dealer who beat me on the other 2 rifles to do the transfer for me since the auction house was using him, but that's the way it goes sometimes. All of the rifles were not import marked.
The 1915 Mauser was the real score though. I won it for $375 which to most people might seem like too much. It's got a lot of corrosion/pitting on it and the stock has a lot of damage. Every single number down to the screws matches though, which is incredibly hard to find for a 1915 or earlier dated rifle, as most were chewed up and didn't survive fully intact due to WWI. This one almost didn't survive though, and I somewhat doubt whoever carried it did.
Looking over the damage, it's pretty obvious that an artillery shell or grenade went off and the shrapnel tore into the stock and put a few small craters in the receiver. There's a few very small visible pieces on the butt, and a magnet I have stuck to one of the larger holes. I stripped it down in order to get rid of the active rust, and found a larger piece embedded in front of the receiver where it cracked the stock. I might have watched a little too much CSI, and this might be stupid, but the pattern of the damage looks like the rifle must have been held up when it was hit. The large amount of pitting makes me think it was wet or laid out in the open for a while. The bore sucks, but the rifle seems like it'll still shoot. Not that I'm going to though. If you look closely in the last picture you can see a larger piece of shrapnel stuck in the hole it made
Anyway, the dealer I saw looking over the stuff beforehand put up some resistance over the Gew 98's and beat me on two of them. I thought I'd won the decent all matching Amberg but instead I won the mismatched Spandau I didn't want that much which kinda made me mad. I won an all matching Mauser Oberndorf though, but it was the ugliest looking one out of the 4. Turned out to have a great surprise with it though. I was also a little annoyed that I had to go pay the dealer who beat me on the other 2 rifles to do the transfer for me since the auction house was using him, but that's the way it goes sometimes. All of the rifles were not import marked.
The 1915 Mauser was the real score though. I won it for $375 which to most people might seem like too much. It's got a lot of corrosion/pitting on it and the stock has a lot of damage. Every single number down to the screws matches though, which is incredibly hard to find for a 1915 or earlier dated rifle, as most were chewed up and didn't survive fully intact due to WWI. This one almost didn't survive though, and I somewhat doubt whoever carried it did.
Looking over the damage, it's pretty obvious that an artillery shell or grenade went off and the shrapnel tore into the stock and put a few small craters in the receiver. There's a few very small visible pieces on the butt, and a magnet I have stuck to one of the larger holes. I stripped it down in order to get rid of the active rust, and found a larger piece embedded in front of the receiver where it cracked the stock. I might have watched a little too much CSI, and this might be stupid, but the pattern of the damage looks like the rifle must have been held up when it was hit. The large amount of pitting makes me think it was wet or laid out in the open for a while. The bore sucks, but the rifle seems like it'll still shoot. Not that I'm going to though. If you look closely in the last picture you can see a larger piece of shrapnel stuck in the hole it made
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