M1 Garand Buyers Guide

hello and welcome back this is Chris with marksman shooting sports in Westfield Indiana and you are watching marksman TV today's video is a buyer's guide to the m1 garand I've done one buyer's guide video before focusing on the ak-47 it seemed to be a pretty popular idea so as kind of a new video concept I'm going to go through different buyer's guide tutorials on some things to look for I personally am very interested in world war ii era firearms i love to collect them really from any country so i like to think i know at least a little bit about the collectability of these different firearms and things to look for if you're at your local gun show or your gun shop or browsing around online on gun broker some things you can look out for to really help you determine value now keep in mind value is definitely in the eye of the beholder so what might one person might look at and think hey that's not collectible at all might be a really valuable treasure to another person I'm not here to discount if you have an m1 in your collection and it's got some certain features that I'm here to talk about today I'm not here to really discount or hurt anybody's feelings this is really just for my personal perspective as well as some of the market trends that I have seen especially in the different options about what different features or aspects of the m1 garand demands different types of money so we'll talk a little bit about that we'll go through all the details especially as a guide to basically talk about different components of the m1 rifle as they were changed throughout their production in and throughout their service life as well as a lot of these did see war primarily through world war ii up through the end of the Korean War talk about some of the variations as well as production numbers and the different contractors if that sounds interesting to you we will go ahead and jump into that now [Music] so what I have here for you today is five m1 Garands it's technically pronounced garand but I'm going to go ahead and say garand now I am definitely not an expert or a professional authority on the m1 rifle I like I said I'd like to say I know enough about them to be dangerous I definitely enjoy collecting them and you know I've read a lot of books and different things Bruce Canfield has a couple extra excellent firearms that touch on this topic one specifically on the m1 garand and m1 carbine as well which I own and I have read through I didn't bring those with me here to show you but made y'all roll in his screenshot what the cover that looks like but some definite excellent information there I'm sure there will be a lot of people who are watching this who might know a little bit more so please feel free to leave in the comment section any additional information I'm going to try not to talk about specifics that I don't know much about but I'll definitely lead some links to some resources so you can go through and further investigate on your own so I have here five M ones that are made by Springfield now there's three reasons why all of these are made by Springfield at least for the purposes of this video the first is the most obvious which is that's what I happen to have so that's what I'm showing you second is Springfield is the only of the four main manufacturers those being Springfield Winchester Harrington & Richardson and International Harvester they are the only of those for US manufacturers that did produce m1 Garands from really the earliest time until the latest time so they started production pre Wars for prior tonight prior to World War two in 1937 and then the production did continue up with them all the way up until 1957 of course well after the completion of the Korean War so these five examples actually are a pretty good sampling of that transitional time period what I have down here at the bottom was made in 1943 this is a 1944 this is a 1945 this one is 1952 and this one here is 1954 so let's go how to move through them now first of all holistically over all the World War two production M ones all else being equal what I mean by that is whether you're looking at a mixture of post-war pre-war parts or Reap are karai's refinish a new stock import marked if all of those characteristics are the same and you're looking at the only differences between them really are one is a Korean War era and one of them is a world war two era the world war two era will typically demand a little bit more of a premium reason for that being is there just tends to be a lot more World War two ERA collectors out there than there are for Korean War era memorabilia collectors or firearms collectors so just the market on and the demand for World War two produced in one cart our m1 Garands is a lot more prominent so therefore tend to bring it a little bit more money now with that being said if you are looking specifically for a World War 2 era m1 garand you will be looking specifically at Winchester and Springfield they were the only two that made em ones during the World War two conflict so again hnr Harrington & Richardson and International Harvester were only made during the Korean War conflict with that being said almost the Springfield made them during the Korean War era but Winchester did not so Winchester only made in one Koran throughout World War two if you are looking for a resource on production numbers production dates and that sort of thing what you'll want to go to is us rifle cow 30 and 1.com I will have a link down in the description for that but what it is is an excellent database or a table that shows you throughout the production of each manufacturers so you have Springfield 1937 to 1945 Winchester 1940 to 1945 and of course you have the other manufacturers for 1950 to 1957 which also did include Springfield's the Springfield did resume production in 1952 for the Korean War conflict now because a lot of the m1 Garands did go on to see service after world war ii a lot of them were sent back to Arsenal's they were really or refurbished had replaced parts had updated parts usually had new stocks fitted onto them and then they went off to see service and the Korean War after the Korean War the same thing out but again they typically went back to Arsenal's they were refinished usually have new stocks but on them had barrels replaced if needed so typically what you will find on a lot of m1 Garands really a vast majority of them as you will find some sort of mixture of replaces parts the more parts that are less original or for example a 1943 m1 garand and again I'm going to go through these parts specifically about what you should find on each era m1 the more of those original parts that have been taken off removed and replace will therefore decrease and some on a little bit of its collectability now some people a lot of collectors will agree that the natural transition between the two wars and the RER smelling was part of the rifles history and therefore if you it have an m1 garand in that condition you shouldn't go retrofitting old parts onto it that's really up to the determination of the owner of the rifle of kind of what collector you see yourself as and what is important to you whether you know it's left just as it went through the Arsenal's or whether you want to revert it back to its original condition but again any alterations made can typically be considered to decrease value something else to look out for is people who will take a completely rearm own m1 and go back and retrofit and put old you know original parts on them some reproduction parts as well in order to pass them off as correct or collector grade and ones to try and get a little bit more money out of them and when they go to resell it so again what does that mean what is correct what is collector well I have had people come in asking me about m1 Garands and they want to purchase one and one of the questions that they will ask me is is that m1 on the wall there is it all matching well there really isn't such a thing when it comes to us small worms as unlike Germany or Japan the United States we did not serialize every single component with the main serial number on the receiver take Germany for example on german mauser k98 our Lugar's it was very common to find the main serial number of the length of the entirety of the serial number and scribed somewhere on the receiver and on every subsequent small part you would usually have the last two digits of that serial number stamped on it somewhere so therefore you could go through the entire Luger or the entire k98 theoretically and look to see if he's component does have a matching number if those numbers on there are matching to the last two digits or the last three digits on the receiver if those numbers are all matching throughout then you call that an all matching firearm therefore it's more collectible a little bit harder to fake as well because you know those are just correct parts for that era they actually have to be numbered of course people can go through the stamps and and of course professionally try and mark out numbers and replace them but those fakes are usually really easy to spot and only really hard to miss if maybe you don't know what you're looking for or the person doing the faking did a phenomenal job to pass it off which has happened with that being said of course since we don't have serial number parts on all of the components of the rifle what you can say though is is the rifle correct and what you mean by correct is is all the parts the the markings for example stock cartouche is the production date on the barrel are the sights is the stock itself the trigger guard the Opera is that all correct for what would have or what should be on that rifle when it was made again parts were referred and upgraded and of course upgraded parts were later placed onto the rifles as they served in later conflicts so it was you know common to see those things replaced and of course people could go back and replace put old parts back on them I know I'm not trying to keep repeating myself here but so is it correct and we're going to talk about what correct really means correct for different rifle is made at different times really means different things so typically the more correct a rifle is with other things being considered finished condition the barrel condition things like that well typically a lot of the times determine the difference between an $800 $900 shooter versus a $2,500 collector so after going through the want long with hit nature of that sort of preface here let's go ahead and start down here with the 1943 m1 garand and actually what I'm going to do is kind of talk component by component and show you how those components have changed over the years so let's start off with the stocks so the stocks are one of the the quickest things you can identify so if you were go at a gun show or anything like that you pick up an m1 garand I guess first and foremost what you want to do is date the receiver so you'll go to the back and I'll bring this in for you this is a 1943 and bringing this in maybe you can read that serial number on there it is in the 2 million so it's 2 million 43,000 is the serial number on this rifle and we just looked at that production chart so you know we determined on that that this was made in 1943 now what happens in the arsenal is is you have accepted stamps cartoons that are marked on to each of the rifles after they go of course that their inspection so what the inspector is doing when they check the rifle is are checking for the working condition they are then fired with a proof round and then checked again for damage and then they are of course accepted by the Ordnance Department and when all that occurs what happens is the inspector will stamp their marking on the stock and that's typically known as a cartouche or an acceptance cartouche for 1943 and 1944 the correct acceptance cartridge would be gee aw that would be the initials of the inspector but this would have a and I'll try and bring this and it's probably going to be difficult for you to see so you probably can't pick it up too well and I'm sorry if you cannot so there is a box here on the top it has si for Springfield Armory and then right below that gee aw that was the inspector and then you have your ordnance wheeled across cannon will acceptance cartouche here and then usually down here on that on the heel you'll have AP and a circle so those are your acceptance proofs what you want to make sure of course is we know that we're in 1943 and we want to make sure that the correct acceptance cartouche for 1943 is the stock usually this will be the number one thing that you don't find again so stocks of course being what going through tumultuous combat you know conditions throughout World War two and then through training and all the sorts of different abuse that they receive of course a wooden stock is typically going to be the first thing to be damaged it was very easy to crack and bang up and damage and then of course the wood could swell and warp you know through either really hot tropical conditions or really cold snowy conditions so the stocks almost always didn't make it through very much of the wars they're usually replaced so a really good resource on stock cartouche is is TR Finlay calm and I will leave a link down in the description so we can move through here and again I'm just talking about Springfield Armory Winchester and you know other manufacturers have their own start acceptance cartridges which are also on this website but if we start off and say the first Co serial number one through eighty and then a t-1000 through 78,000 that would be 1936 through 1940 would have accepted stands accepted stamp si SPG and that was for Stanley P Gibbs who is the inspector and then you go on to 1940 / 1942 November 1940 s now inspector GHS which is Gilbert H Stewart then you're in 1940 to 1942 it's still si GHS then we're in 1942 tonight June of 1940 two-digit July of 1942 you now have ENC f which is romic Earl McFarland and then you know like we mention on this one 1943 of August of 1943 to March of 1945 you have GA w which is George a woody and then 1944 to 1945 is NF r which is Norman Ramsey and so on and so forth and you get the idea and you can through that database so that's of course one thing you want to take a look at so date your receiver say who's the Hoos would be the correct acceptance marking look on the stock see if that is there because these are so difficult to come by if you find original stocks with different inspectors markings especially from Winchester you can end they're in good condition you can easily spend about between two to four hundred dollars depending on condition for that stock just because they are very high demand and there's not very many to go around again moving up here to 1944 we have GA W and then here on this stock we have NF R so those are correct on this is JLG I believe it's very faint yeah JLG that would be correct now we're into the Korea War era so in 1953 you know we moved to this in 1953 to 1957 this is what most people are familiar with and it is the Department of Defense acceptance stamp which is an eagle with three stars above it and a box so try and roll that in and if you can't see these I'll roll and pictures for you typically on most em ones this is what you're seeing especially a lot of the ones coming from the CMP because again what happens is these go off to World War two they go back to an Arsenal they get rear Arsenal this is a good example of what happens when it gets regarde snowed so this one retained its original 1944 stock but you might be able to see stamped in there it's a a that's a gusta Arsenal so this was rehearsal they cut the stock on here just stamped it AAA to notify that it happened through an Arsenal went back out the door after World War two probably for Korea because there are some other features on here that kind of denote that and then after Korea never went back to an Arsenal again most likely unless the stock was retrofitted and I'll never know that and then you know ended up coming home somehow now the next thing to consider is the barrel date and that's kind of the next easiest thing so by already dating what the production date on the receiver is and of course verifying you have the correct stock that was usually put on it at that time the next thing to do was to check the barrel date so because these were used over such a long period of time it was very normal for barrels to wear out get corroded usually your they would be tested at their throat and at their muzzle that's te and m e usually use the te and m e gauges to check that and I'll go over that a little bit more in a little while but if it was deemed to be unserviceable of course when I went back to the rear to the Arsenal's they would just slap on a new barrel now fortunately enough the barrels were actually dated so again this is a 1943 production m1 garand with it's correct stock and fortunately we can see here on the barrel the barrel will be data right in here it's a series of numbers this si - 10 - 43 I don't know specifically what that 10 is it's probably the month actually I'm pretty sure it is that would be October 43 si of course for Springfield so we know that this was the original Springfield barrel made in October of 1943 which corresponds correctly with the production of the serial number so that's where you check what that being said is well something else for correct parts is to make sure that now the parts were not numbered but they typically will have a drawing number as well as the manufacturers two letter code or so si for Springfield or W way for Winchester so on and so forth or HRA for Harrington & Richardson so then that way you can tell who is the manufacturer those parts as another thing to do is to go through the parts and make sure that they of course were all made by that manufacturer now m1 carbines were a little bit unique and so far as different manufacturers routinely made different components for those rifles so it's very normal to find them with a mixed matched conglomeration of different manufactured parts as far as my understandings are for the most part m1 grains were not done that way every part on it should be made by that specific manufacturer of course they are another example 1944 the marking is sa-11 44 so that would be Springfield Arsenal in November of 1944 which again matches with the production on the receiver now this here is an example of a rebuild garand so this one was made in 1952 / the serial number the barrel dates at 1966 so this was actually repair old way after the war so israei barreled about four years after it was made and this is the only example I have here that fits that all the others have a barrel data to the date of manufacture per the receiver okay the next thing we will look at is sites now sites is another quick thing to pick out sites for the most part during world war ii had variations of what was known as a lock bar site now I'm bringing up here an image to show you here on the screen and this basically talks about the differences of the changes in the rear sight and these are the quick ways to identify them so of course after you date for the per the serial number what the date of manufacturer is you want to of course cross-reference to make sure it's got the correct sights on it and this is of course I'm going through these points to basically show you when you pick up a rifle you look at the serial number you know when it was made and these are the ways to say what would correctly be on this this oh and you can look at it the stock okay it's correct he's got the correct barrel date but maybe this the sights are off so the sights have been updated so that you know it's been through an arsenal or a previous owner has decided to replace them for whatever reason so you know that's one thing that's different about it and therefore you can make your own evaluation of what you want to pay for that rifle based on knowing that information so let's go ahead and get back here to the chart and we'll go ahead and start at the bottom so this is from the beginning of production to serial number 530 thousand of course we're only looking at Springfield Garands right now you have letter known as the flesh not sights and they are a short pinion the opinion is is the little bar that's running across between the two side bases you see there so of course you can take a look at the graphics on the left and the rider the windage and elevation side adjustment I guess the notches are wheels whatever you want to call them I sort of get an idea of what that would look like so if you are looking at a very early m1 that should have those sights then you have your type one now this is the beginning of your Lockett bar so you have a again a short pinion and you have a rounded lock bar your tattoos from serial number 1.0 to 2.5 million is you're a long pinion now with a round bar and then in your type 3 you have this square bar on the long pinion and then your tight or your t105 or type 105 that's your post World War 2 and that's what virtually everybody has on their m1 every single one of the ones on the table has this post-war world war two side on it so if any of them went through the arsenal and I'm sure all five of these did or you know of course the top two were made after this transition so any made post-war any made by HRA or any made by International Harvester unless they're using old stock would have been made with this t105 rear sight base anyway but you're a wartime Springfield's and of course your Winchester M ones for the different production time or different production numbers on your receiver should have this corresponding type one two or three lock bars or the flush net size because of that just like finding an m1 with the original stock in cartouche is pretty difficult so is finding an original site with their lock bars you can get a complete block bar site base for around $200 that's original and there are plenty of reproductions made I don't have any here to show you the differences but just make sure you're very careful what you're looking at it has lock bar sights because those lock bar sights in and of themselves can add significant value to the rifle if you find them with those on there of course you want to make sure the type is correct for your rifle but anyway this is of course the example everybody's familiar with it's just the post-war sight base here and again all five of these and ones have this sight base on it the next thing we will look at is the trigger guard so there are basically two different variations and the switch did happen in April of 1944 sir prior to 1944 you have this trigger guard which was known as the milled or the milled a circle trigger guard usually denoted by this little circle here in the back these were machine they did take a lot of time to produce try and back it up with the black here and of course they were time-consuming and did take a little bit more cost and production so what happened is in late 1944 or mid-1944 they did go over to the stamped site base which you see on this one this is a 1945 rifle and as you can see that site base is stamped it doesn't have that little loop in the back that's the quickest way to tell these are also the same was Ising site basis trigger cars that's what I'm trying to say these are also the same trigger guards that were used on the m14 s now the reason that little loop is there is to be able to put in a bullet tip or a cleaning rod or anything like that put through there to help you use as leverage to open up because in order to get the lock or the trigger group out of the stock you pull to the rear and then hinge that open then your trigger group pops out and then that's how its disassembled so to recap beginning production of course this is you know pretty much per Springfield em once beginning of production until mid to late 1944 we have Milt and then after you know basically late 44 - 45 I'm sorry late 44 to end a production you have the stamped like on these three okay now I've taken three of these rifles out of their stocks I have up here at the top the 1944 1943 and 1952 I'm going to go over the different operas and there were basically three configurations of these and we'll go ahead and start up here with the 1944 so the 1944 here on this one we have an uncut op rod and I'll bring that in so you can see so here you'll notice right here on this corner there is no cut it's just a nice 90-degree angle that was the configuration the op rod was in throughout the entirety of World War two now after World War two what they decided to do was go ahead and cut that corner out so you see that there's a cut there and a cut here so this was originally when this was made that was a solid corner or that nice 90-degree angle we saw on the other one but this one's been gone into and then they decided to cut it so you can tell it's been basically altered by the fact that there is a little cut notch here on this I - the reason that they wanted to do that is they saw that 90 degree angle was a good to stress fracture area so that perfect 90 degree area build up a lot of I guess took on a lot of stress they were super of the action there weren't any massive amounts of reports that showed that there would be any breakages or any cracks or fractures in that point I guess it did happen in some cases so they went ahead and put in the relief cut to keep that corner off of the opera to basically not have a point of stress on it as I guess effectively what I'm trying to say so nem ones that were made post-world War two they went ahead and made them with that cut out in it and I'll show you that in a second any of that did not have that cut out in it they went back and basically put that relief cut in there on pre-existing operons so the third type which we see here it has this relief cut in it and that was made that way and there's no additional cut over here it's basically just flat and smooth all the way across this is how it was made so this is your post production World War two abroad the last one I showed you was a pre-production world or made during World War two but then went in and cut and the first one I showed you was an unaltered World War two ERA abroad so in summation if you have a World War 2 m1 garand it should have that cut angle post World War two either have the relief cut cut into it or the post-war op rod that was just manufactured but that relief got there now while I have this apart again I talked about those parts drawing numbers those are a number stand from the parts that did not necessarily match the receiver there were just part numbers that were stamped on there I guess for the record-keeping of the manufacturers so in this part number you usually have some sort of indication of the manufacturer like on the apparat we have number d3 603 eight to nine si so si of course film it's made by Springfield as this is a Springfield abroad other parts up here on the bolt carrier again part number followed by si so you know at Springfield down here on let's see trying to find other parts of course we went over the barrel already trigger group mechanism to your trigger group housing a series of numbers followed by si your hammer here on the hammer phase series of numbers followed by si a safety lever probably trigger sear yeah the sear back here parts followed by si so that's how you can go through and determine if all the parts internally are made by Springfield and actually all five of the cases I have on the table they are all throughout Springfield Arsenal now using those drawing numbers there are some tables you can find that kind of give you an idea of you know a particular drawing number on a hammer can give you an idea of when that hammer may have been manufactured and you can use ease even check each one of those individual parts against the manufacturer data the receiver just to make sure you're getting something 100% as it left the factory I personally don't go to that in-depth for me it's about the receiver matching the stock cartouche is the barrel date and just making sure all the parts throughout our Springfield made okay a couple other points to make and then I will wrap this up so another one is import marks so these of course were issued and licensed and sent from the US military to other countries around the world as either Linley's for purchase rifles and when those eventually ended up coming back into the United States a lot of the times they were bought by importers like Century Arms or blue sky usually see blue sky import marks required by law when those came into the country and then resold on the consumer market they had to be import marked this process of is true not only of em ones but most surplus rifles you can find import marks on a lot of usually foreign rifles but again when these came back into the US they had to be import import marks again holistically it's pretty understood an import mark will decrease the value personally I think significantly I don't like to have any collectible firearms that have import marks on them to me that's kind of like just writing graffiti on the firearm now there are a lot of people who would disagree with me but if you're looking at an m1 garand or really any other collectible firearm for that matter make sure that it is not import mark the important marks usually up on the barrel so look on both sides of the barrel very carefully to make sure you don't see that sometimes you also see them stamped on the receipt Brij back here so especially if you're paying a premium price for a collectible m1 make absolutely sure there is no importation work if you go to resell that thing I mean a lot of collectors will shy away from it and then you'll really only get potential sellers that you know kind of in this shooter market somebody who just wants a a you know a nice cheap ish and one to go shoot not necessarily collectible so again some people might disagree with me on that but that's just my own personal opinion and importation works so a lot of people especially in the m1 garand market are very tedious about this there's showed up a lot usually on how the CMP which is the Civilian Marksmanship program evaluates and values their m1 rifles and how they classify them they will usually check the TE which is the throat erosion and the Emme which is the muzzle erosion there are gauges you can purchase on the market usually anywhere from 80 to 150 bucks I think is the general going rate I have a set at home that I've had for a while so I don't even remember what I paid for them and unfortunately I didn't bring them with me dated today to show you how they work but they artists and gauges one that goes into through the throat and one on the muzzle end and they will gauge until you essentially how much barrel life or how much where the barrel has already seen for example the CMP says I believe these numbers are correct that a throat erosion of five and a muzzle erosion of three or lower would be considered serviceable anything over that would be more Iraq grade or you know might need to be considered for barrel replacement I don't know what the Ordnance departments or what the military determined was appropriate or inappropriate for field use before they replace them but it was common especially with the 3006 round and these did see a lot of use both in training and in the field again through a couple decades of service it was very common to have these things with barrels replaced on them which again is why it's rare to find a barrel with the same production date as the receiver anyway guys that basically sums it up for me this video it looks like it ended up being pretty long I try not to be so long-winded but I'm the best at that so I hope that you found that interesting if you are looking into getting into the m1 market it's a really fun hobby to get into especially if you're going to get into collecting or if you're just looking for that one to basically fill a gap in your US or World War two collections and you're just looking to do that again remember to look for those parts consider what you want to pay the more of those parts that are not correct to the rifle the less money you should pay also import mark you should pay less and a really worn or used barrel you should pay less so that will hopefully arm you with some information when you were considering which m1 will be perfect for you and your needs again I am Chris with marksman shooting sports and in Westfield Indiana you are watching marksman TV we will see you next time

Channel: MarksmanTV

Views: 236,187

Rating: 4.8548546 out of 5

Keywords: M1 Garand, WWII, Surplus, Rifle, Firearms, Collector, Value, Buyers guide, 30-06, comparison, review, ww2, garand, carbine

Id: KRY35w9KKX4

Length: 32min 58sec (1978 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 28 2017