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After the Cody Show, I had the chance to do some filming at the Cody Firearms Museum. Of course, I just had to go through the vaults where the 1895’s were kept. CFM curator, Danny Michael was gracious enough to let me pull out a couple of Russian contract prototypes to film. One’s a carbine and the other is an NRA-style musket, both in 7.62x54r with stripper clip guides. What a treat to get to handle these one-of-a-kind Winchesters! Mark
November 7, 2015
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Good show, Mark. Danny did a great job of picking out a few very interesting examples for this segment. I wish we knew more about them. Until reading the Kassab & Dunbar book and Williamson’s book I had no idea Winchester built so many muskets. Wasn’t aware of the increased collector interest, any idea what’s driving it? At one time I considered buying a Russian Musket to take advantage of the cheap surplus ammo but apparently that ship has sailed.
Mike
TXGunNut said
Good show, Mark. Danny did a great job of picking out a few very interesting examples for this segment. I wish we knew more about them. Until reading the Kassab & Dunbar book and Williamson’s book I had no idea Winchester built so many muskets. Wasn’t aware of the increased collector interest, any idea what’s driving it? At one time I considered buying a Russian Musket to take advantage of the cheap surplus ammo but apparently that ship has sailed.
Mike
I think it’s the combined interest of Winchester collectors and military firearms collectors. Also, I’m told that they’re used prominently in some very popular video game. It may be a similar situation to what we saw in the value of Colt Pythons after they showed up in some Zombie movie or TV series.
Just a couple of years ago, you could pick up a well-used Russian musket for $2,500. Today, I’m seeing them in the same condition selling for $6k and more. I’m glad I already have a couple of them and wish I’d picked up every one of them I could find over the years. One can never tell what’s going to be the next buying craze. Mark
Mike and Mark,
Funny, just yesterday I had a couple of WRACO 7.62 Russian cartridges and Dan Shuey’s book out trying to determine which one would best fit my early WRACO cartridge collection. Both have full metal jacket bullets and have nickel primers but one is oval and the other is flat. I figure the #1 oval is probably the better one.
My collection is ammo that was loaded in Winchester firearms excluding a bunch that were loaded in the 1885’s. I have examples from the Volcanic to the early 1900’s of most cartridges.. The 7.62 Russian and the 303 British were 2 of the hardest cartridges to find. I only need a 50-105 which I may never be able to afford. I’m always looking for oddball WRACO cartridges that were only loaded for the 85.
Are there tens or hundreds of thousands of these in Russia somewhere? Some entity could make a fortune exporting these to the United States. If not, where did they all go?
Those Russian muskets made it to Finland and Spain also. I was collecting Finnish and Russian Mosin Nagants 25 years ago but could never pony up the 1K it cost to buy a Russian M95 back in those days. Like Mark, I wish I would have bought everyone I saw, no matter how rough.
I think all the stockpiles of M95 have been exported from Russia , Spain and Finland back in the 80’s. I’d like to know where all the Smith and Wesson revolvers are that the Russians bought. I don’t believe they ever came on the surplus market. I suppose they broke them all down for scrap before WWI.
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