[Mangrove]

Just wondering how many were imported.

Were they all from Finland back then? I doubt any were coming from the Warsaw pact countries in those days.

I assume many came from Finland and numerous more from Spain too.

Finland exported over 300,000 Mosin Nagants to Canada and the United States between 1959 and 2001. Most of the exports were done between 1985 and 1992. The number of exported rifles is over half of all Finnish Mosins in the inventory during the 1950s and 1960s.

 

[peterbats59]

Even if the lower end of 1-3 million is right, no other rifle in history is a better candidate for bubba-fication, especially the ones that were little more than heavy walking sticks by the time they got here. There's no shame in turning gardening implements into useful working firearms IMHO.

 

[Panzer Front]

1-3 million seems about right. Century was by far the largest importer and with all variants they easily did 800,000+ on there own, probably more. What other former USSR satellite countries did they come from post 1991? We know for sure Poland, Hungary, Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia itself (at least until 2014). Did any come from Reunified Germany, or the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus)? Did any come from central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, ect.)?

 

[Tinanzer87]

1-3 million seems about right. Century was by far the largest importer and with all variants they easily did 800,000+ on there own, probably more. What other former USSR satellite countries did they come from post 1991? We know for sure Poland, Hungary, Albania, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia itself (at least until 2014). Did any come from Reunified Germany, or the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus)? Did any come from central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, ect.)?

Wow i was right about something...…lol seriously though based on my estimates from the early 2000's all the way to about 2015 mosins were in almost every gun shop I ever went into. and all over the place online and in a lot of big box stores. There are more Mosins then people think out there. Heck i would say a million alone came from the Ukraine in the early 2000's.

 

[Ol' Relic]

Even if the lower end of 1-3 million is right, no other rifle in history is a better candidate for bubba-fication, especially the ones that were little more than heavy walking sticks by the time they got here. There's no shame in turning gardening implements into useful working firearms IMHO.

NO milsurp deserves to be bubbafied.

 

[peterbats59]

NO milsurp deserves to be bubbafied.

Yeah, we've been down that rabbit hole many times. Miller Tyme's collection is truly outstanding for sure. "Restoring" a walking stick with whatever miscellaneous random mismatched spare parts can be found isn't going to create a "collectible" gun. Sometimes, maybe once every couple of decades, though, I'd rather have an actually useful and fun rifle that I actually want to carry and use to shoot at stuff, than some comrade's walking stick. And with 3+ million floating around, I'm not depriving anyone of any opportunity to start or continue building their collection.

 

[tacfoley2 in Memoriam]

Without registration you'll never know.

Heck, nobody knows how many Whitworth rifles came into the Southern States during the Civil War, and that was probably less than 500 - most mavens suggest as few as 120.

 

[Ol' Relic]

Yeah, we've been down that rabbit hole many times. Miller Tyme's collection is truly outstanding for sure. "Restoring" a walking stick with whatever miscellaneous random mismatched spare parts can be found isn't going to create a "collectible" gun. Sometimes, maybe once every couple of decades, though, I'd rather have an actually useful and fun rifle that I actually want to carry and use to shoot at stuff, than some comrade's walking stick. And with 3+ million floating around, I'm not depriving anyone of any opportunity to start or continue building their collection.

You're entitled to your opinion, and I'm entitled to vehemently disagree with it. 😏

 

[max]

I wonder if there are more in usa than russia.

 

[AK-Karl]

I don't know how many were imported but I have 6 of them & I think 2 don't have import marks. Some of them were made in the US weren't they?

 

[Panzer Front]

I don't know how many were imported but I have 6 of them & I think 2 don't have import marks. Some of them were made in the US weren't they?

Remington & Westinghouse

 

[Richard in NY*]

Even if the lower end of 1-3 million is right, no other rifle in history is a better candidate for bubba-fication, especially the ones that were little more than heavy walking sticks by the time they got here. There's no shame in turning gardening implements into useful working firearms IMHO.

 

[Richard in NY*]

Yeah, we've been down that rabbit hole many times. Miller Tyme's collection is truly outstanding for sure. "Restoring" a walking stick with whatever miscellaneous random mismatched spare parts can be found isn't going to create a "collectible" gun. Sometimes, maybe once every couple of decades, though, I'd rather have an actually useful and fun rifle that I actually want to carry and use to shoot at stuff, than some comrade's walking stick. And with 3+ million floating around, I'm not depriving anyone of any opportunity to start or continue building their collection.

😖

 

[Richard in NY*]

NO milsurp deserves to be bubbafied.

Big +1 👍

 

[Panzer Front]

😖

I thought the pro-bubba sentiment was long dead.

 

[BlackPowder]

I don’t have the foggiest clue…. But I’ve heard 17,000,000 were made? Maybe just in Russia. Figure a few million elsewhere too. At least half of those were probably consumed in two world wars, leading to about 10,000,000 surviving. Of those, maybe a third were scrapped as unserviceable, or broken up for parts? Leading to ~6.5 million surviving Mosins, of which I would guess at least 3 million were imported to the USA, from all the various places Mosins were used and stockpiled. Could be anothef

Obviously this is pretty rough back-of-the-napkin speculation, but we can reasonably assume there aren’t a lot more in Ukraine and the other former Soviet bloc countries. I’d think they’d have sold them off already in 2010-2013 before the war in the Donbass started. Prices on Mosins were already starting to climb a bit and prices don’t climb when there’s seemingly a saturated market and inexhaustible supply.

But there could be another couple million sitting in Russian and other warehouses still. At some point though it won’t make sense for a government to hold onto them…what good is a bolt gun if you also have 20,000,000 AKs in reserve?

I wonder if the various large importers would answer truthfully if someone asked?

 

[Panzer Front]

I don’t have the foggiest clue…. But I’ve heard 17,000,000 were made? Maybe just in Russia. Figure a few million elsewhere too. At least half of those were probably consumed in two world wars, leading to about 10,000,000 surviving. Of those, maybe a third were scrapped as unserviceable, or broken up for parts? Leading to ~6.5 million surviving Mosins, of which I would guess at least 3 million were imported to the USA, from all the various places Mosins were used and stockpiled. Could be anothef

Obviously this is pretty rough back-of-the-napkin speculation, but we can reasonably assume there aren’t a lot more in Ukraine and the other former Soviet bloc countries. I’d think they’d have sold them off already in 2010-2013 before the war in the Donbass started. Prices on Mosins were already starting to climb a bit and prices don’t climb when there’s seemingly a saturated market and inexhaustible supply.

But there could be another couple million sitting in Russian and other warehouses still. At some point though it won’t make sense for a government to hold onto them…what good is a bolt gun if you also have 20,000,000 AKs in reserve?

I wonder if the various large importers would answer truthfully if someone asked?

37 million were made total according to wikipedia, around 3 million by just Izhevsk in 1943 alone. Probably more than half were destroyed or scrapped.

What's strange is Century did sell a batch of about ~2500 in the summer of 2020. Most of them were ex dragoons made by Izhevsk, and they were sorted and labeled as such. I was hoping they would do the same for some Tula ex dragoons, but no luck. What's even stranger is the serial numbers on these were 9130868XXX. The last batch that came in around late 2016 ended around 9130489XXX, how they made a jump of almost 400,000 I don't know.

 

[FGD135]

The totals would have to be in the millions. Prior to 1968 the rules for the serial #'s were different. Century was only one of many importers and each had their own import marks and serial #'s.

Prior to 1986, there was NO REQUIREMENT for importers to apply new serial numbers to imported surplus firearms, and in fact, it was several years after 1986 before this rule was implemented by the ATF. Before 1986 there were also no requirements for imported surplus firearms to be marked with importer name or country of origin. In the golden age, some importers did this just for marketing reasons...
In addition to the many MN sold off to US importers from Finland in the 1950s, and from the sale of surplus rifles by Franco in the 1950's, and the post 86 various European imports, let us not forget the vast numbers, probably in the 10s of thousands, or more, of T53 Mosin carbines from the Korea war era, and more recently from China, that were imported pre and post 1986, via Century, Navy Arms, via Val Forgett and Interarmco, etc.

 

[Louie]

It would be hard to know. There were many imported in the mid to late sixties with interesting stories behind them. Found on a crashed Russian Sputnik and other ridiculous stories in the ads from Ye Olde Hunter, Golden State Arms, etc. Then after the fall of the Communist empire they came in by the boatload from Ukraine especially, but also Albania, and other Warsaw Pact nations. Doubt we will ever know.

 

[Louie]

I almost forgot that a buttload of Mosins came in from China too before Clinton banned the importation. Many M53's and also some 91/30's came from the PRC and these were not refinished. Some were beat to crap, and others like an m53 I had were near mint.