Actually I was looking for an excellent Finnish M39 at that time, but couldn't find any. A shooting club friend gave me the advice to look for a Hungarian or Polish Mosin-Nagant instead - very nice, well-made rifles, mostly found in unissued, all-matching condition and more easily available after his opinion. Okay, no Polish ones to find also and I didn't really want a carbine, too. So I turned my attention to the Hungarians. At that time it was the only Hungarian Mosin-Nagant on the market here in Germany, so the price was close to the upper limit for such rifles here. About a month later popped up a good handful of them at the same time in auctions here, also in very good, unissued condition for the most part - they went typically for prices between 100-150 Euros. But one which could have been a clone of mine from the auction pictures was sold for incredible 74 Euros! If I only had waited a little bit longer...
My example was imported from Hungary in unissued condition in the mid-1980s by the German company "Frankonia Waffen" at Würzburg/Bavaria - the largest importer of military surplus rifles here in Germany since decades. At that company one of the bosses at once took this rifle for his personal collection, where it remained until recently, when this guy gave up collecting due to his age. A former Frankonia employee who is now running a small arms dealer business bought it and in turn sold it to me.
The rifle has an interesting elm stock and is all-matching. Bore is mirror shining and it shoots pretty well - far better than I'm able to take advantage of. I got it without any accessories, so I had to buy them separately. First came a Hungarian bayonet (still looking for the matching number, but I'm afraid this will be in vain), next was a Hungarian sling. Admittedly, I did buy a few spare bayonets and slings - one never knows
. Two different types of Hungarian oilers, stripper clips and a cleaning kit completed the accessories. Since I was unable until now to find a complete Hungarian cleaning kit, I tried my best to produce one from single parts I bought on different occasions. While the oilers, screwdriver tool and most probably also the stripper clip are genuine Hungarian (after studying a number of pictures and original pieces of unmarked Eastern Bloc stripper clips I found out, that Hungarian - and maybe Romanian ones, too - seem to have a more shiny appearance than the very similar Czechoslovakian and Polish clips and are a little bit shallower - about 1-2 mm - when viewed from the side), the muzzle cap and the pouch are only "the best I could find until now" - maybe also Hungarian, but I'm not sure. The smaller items like brush, jag etc. are less critical - they look pretty much the same for all countries. There are "02" marked Hungarian muzzle caps out there, but until now I couldn't find one.Okay, enough words about just an old military rifle. Enjoy the pictures!
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