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Type 100 SMG Stock and Receiver Piece - A Win and a Loss

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487 views 9 replies 4 participants last post by  Kaigunto230  
#1 ·
One of my favorite parts of this hobby is using knowledge to spot things that aren’t listed properly for sales. There’s something fun getting to fact-check sellers. I stumbled on a single, very bad photo of a stock labeled as something like “stock with Japanese marks” and recognized instantly the pull latch on a Type 100 Submachine Gun. It also contained at least part of the receiver; because I’m positive it’ll come up, the next post in this thread is my legal discussion on that.

I own a Type 99 LMG and enjoy Japanese machine guns generally, and given the fact that it was a tiny auction house with that one very bad photo and description, I couldn’t go terribly wrong if I didn’t let myself get carried away bidding.

Some other eagle eye collector must’ve spotted it too, because in the last 20 minutes of a multi-week auction, the thing jumped from basically free to the cost of a decent mid-war Type 99. If you’re the other bidder, I’d love to hear from you; sorry, I snagged it.

But maybe they wouldn’t have bid had the photos been better. After you read this, would you have? When I received it yesterday, I’ll say that I was disappointed. With the one photo, it obviously was a gamble. And there are certainly pros and cons. So here it is:

Pros:
  • “Matching” Serial Numbers – Ha ha, obviously we’re sure missing a lot of serialized pieces, but it was neat to see that those remain are all stamped 4714: receiver, stock, trigger guard, and latch for unhooking the receiver. Weirdly, there’s also a lone “3” stamped on the underside of the receiver.
  • Cartouche – a lovely cartouche near the latch. I need to dig in Shigeo Sugawa’s Japanese Machine Guns/some other threads here. The kanji is either 結 or 締.
  • Trigger – the sharp, dagger-like trigger is really fun to pull. Obviously with the open bolt, it’s just forward and back, which is fun.
  • Rarity - Sugawa’s book lists out known serials, approximately 30 of them; I’ve read that Easterly’s booklet has 47 serials. Sugawa estimates there are less than 100 still in existence. This serial was not listed in Sugawa’s book, so that’s neat too. The only sales in the last twenty years for the full guns have been for wild prices, like the one Ian covered on Forgotten Weapons from Morphy’s that sold recently for over $84,000. As a result, I will never, ever own the full gun. So this is a neat display piece I can put out on an educational table at a gunshow. Given the price, I think I did okay.


Cons – “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”:
  • Pitting – Wow, oh wow. The single auction photo was blurry and I couldn’t have believed it would be this bad. The metal itself is patina’d everywhere and I feel lucky that the serial and Nagoya arsenal mark are even visible. I was absolutely crestfallen to see that the “Type 100” kanji was not even visible on top. What an absolute bummer.
  • Stock Crack and Foreend Chip – The stock has a decent wrist crack and that will likely need to be repaired before shooting (ha ha, when pigs fly, right?). There’s also a small chip off the foreend.
  • Rear Sight – It’s missing. When looking at other similar serials, this one should have the simplified, soldered on sight. I’m betting it just came undone. Sugawa mentions that troops would remove the tangent sight on the earlier guns so it wouldn’t snag on their uniforms. I don’t think that happened here, but there’s a small outside chance that might have been the case. I don’t buy it, but who knows.
In the end, I think that I’m happy I bought it, particularly at the price of a plain Jane mid-war Type 99. But it sure wasn’t celebratory opening the box yesterday. We’ll see if the excitement grows. When I think of it in the context for what I bought it — on a display table next to my LMG helping educate collectors and inspire people to learn more history — I’m a little happier. But what about you? Would you have gone for it?

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#3 ·
Before the pitchforks come out, it looks like this is a saw-cut portion of the receiver. However, this is absolutely not an NFA item. This isn’t even a ‘parts kit’ as the ATF or the collecting community would consider it. There’s literally nothing else besides a couple inches of a receiver. No internals, no magazine, no barrel, no nothing. It’s a paperweight.

But for argument’s sake, even if it it’s a parts kit, it’s absolutely not covered by the NFA. Currently, the courts have said that a parts kit is still considered a machine gun if it’s not destroyed and can be “readily restored” into a live machinegun. United States v. one TRW Model M14, 7.62 Caliber Rifle from William K. Alverson, 441 F.3d 416 (6th Cir. 2006). This small portion of the Type 100 is not able to be readily restored.

The courts use the following factors to determine if a gun is “readily restorable”:
(1) time, i.e., how long it takes to restore the weapon; - would be impossible here without the remaining parts; even with them, it would take a long time;
(2) ease, i.e., how difficult it is to restore the weapon; - would be very difficult; impossible from the stock and breech piece, as it’s missing anything else of substance.
(3) expertise, i.e., what knowledge and skills are required to restore the weapon; - would take professional machining skills;
(4) necessary equipment, i.e., what tools are required to restore the weapon; - would need a machine shop;
(5) availability, i.e., where additional parts are required, how easily they can be obtained; - parts are non-existent; only a few thousand were made total back in WWII, and most of those were lost/destroyed in the war. There’s approximately 100 here in the US;
(6) expense, i.e., how much it costs to restore the weapon; - Incredibly, prohibitively expensive. parts kits are non-existent, and full guns cost upwards of $80,000;
(7) scope, i.e., the extent to which the weapon has been changed . . . – weapon is now a literal paperweight, since it doesn’t include the other parts of the receiver, let alone the internals, the magazine, or the barrel;
(8) feasibility, i.e., whether the restoration would damage or destroy the weapon or cause it to malfunction.” - this is one small part, so it’s impossible to restore.

As I thought about whether to bid, I spent time analyzing this and was comfortable that this is no longer “readily restorable” under the NFA and nor is it a parts kit to begin with. This is not a machine gun.
 
N
#7 ·
No one with $1.00 worth of cents thinks that this is NFA. It’s half a receiver tube. If it takes longer than fifteen seconds for someone to figure that out, they need to get out of this hobby.
 
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#6 ·
As a piece of history to be used as such In a display I believe this is important to safeguard as very few were made. Now having seen the condition of the parts which i would label as relic condition, i would not have bid to the point you probably did. Its very neat and deserves to be displayed, but like most relics your throwing money at the idea of having something rare without any of the functionality.
 
#8 ·
I tend to agree with you. If they'd had the top of the receiver visible and shown that the "Type 100" was illegible, I wouldn't have bid as much. It's still absolutely neat, but like you said, with no hope of ever having functionality, if you can't see the neat markings, at some level it's just the lump of metal. I don't buy relics, and I'd agree that the metal at least is bad enough to be relic quality.

Something I'm interested in that we'll never learn is whether or not it was in this condition when it was brought back to the States. And beyond that, where's the rest of it? Interesting to think about how it meandered through history to end up in the middle of a forgotten local auction in rural America.
 
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