Well, there's a reason for posing this question. My son Rob (33) and I were on a road trip to Denver recently. When I'm hurtling down the interstate, if I see a Cabela's, I stop and look. Not long into the trip, I stopped at one of their stores. They had recently bought a collection of about 450 pieces from someone. There were lots of milsurps in the lot, from $14,000 snipers (their price, anyway), RC Lugers, scads of 6.5 and 7.35 Italians, and several racks of K98's, mostly RC. One was a G.98-40, 660 1940 I think it was. Also a few Yugo things. I spent some time examining every K98. The bolts were tied shut so I couldn't get a good look at the bores, except to examine the crowns. Some looked shot, others looked good. Lots of diff. manufacturers, byf, dou, bnz, bcd, bcd/ar, some S/42's of diff. years, some 147 & 243 and a few BSW. Didn't see a single ce (Sauer).
Mis-matched bolts as you'd expect, but when I talked to the help about their 450 gun buy, the salesman told me "all the good stuff is gone" which means they had better than the ones currently on display. On the remaining pieces, different markings, some with the Russian strike-over on the receiver, some without, etc.
I passed on buying an RC when they were cheap. As an advanced Mauser collector friend advised at the time, "Oh, you don't want to buy one of those greasy, mis-matched things."
However, now I'm thinking that the opinion these are undesirable "greasy mismatches" is the viewpoint of a strict condition collector. The historical interest surrounding the RC guns is there, e.g., it's almost certain that they are all veterans of the eastern front and have seen actual combat. Unlike a very nice LW-marked rifle that spent all of the war years on a Norwegian airfield, as another example. One with an early date might be a veteran of several fronts.
Since I missed out on the RC rifles the first time around, this is a second chance and I'm thinking about getting one. They are priced at $400 and $500 which seems like a lot, particularly since condition from one price category to another makes you wonder, "Huh?" Well, I guess that will be the price to pay for history if I decide to follow through. I'm going to drive 300+ miles over to this store Thursday and look them all over again. I doubt if they've sold many or any since I last looked.
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...I probably should have kept them since they'd be worth a nice increase for the meager $$$ I invested back then...
