I think collector's value was gone when almost all of the long rifles were de-crested by Argentinians before selling them as surplus. Drilling the action for a scope and turning down the bolt was just throwing a jar of water into a flood. For the price it sounds good; I'd get it as a fun "restoration" proyect, patching the holes by fitting them with a proper set of screws and then filing them down; also I'd either repair the bolt or get a correct bolt body replacement if the first option is not easy or cost-wise.

I partly agree with you. To me any military gun that can still be restored to the original military looks no matter if using a replacement stock, different caliber barrel or else and still be able to fire while looking as issued it's a collectible gun. Unfortunately the real values and standards are set by those die-hard "extremists" who see a gun that's not a 100% factory original or at least "correct" as a "mere shooter", unworthy of their attention and usually regarded as ruined as a collectible item; that's why no matter how nice and well-preserved a common Israeli K98k is, it would almost NEVER reach the desire level and monetary value of a Wermatch-issued K98k in the same condition. Nor a perfectly and professionally restored to 100% correct factory standards Mauser C96 Large Ring model would be as worthy as an "unmolested" piece

Regarding the Argentinian situation, at least for me those government arsenal modifications are fine if they are meant to keep the rifle in serviceable condition, like the one made to the original double-flip rear sights (Probably altered sometime around the beginning of the 20th. century) by the Argentinians to use the then new Spitzer bullet with different ballistic behavior of the original and heavier round-nose bullet which this rifles were intended to use; They kept the original barrels and modified the rear sights by removing the flip up piece and probably renumbering the scale, and we choose removing the entire barrel and replacing it with a new SIG-made fitted with Lange-style sights, but anyway in both cases, guns were altered to keep them in duty.

Problem in my book is that the crest removal was only made apparently to comply a dumb Argentinian law that stated that any gun bearing the National Crest had to suffer this procedure to remove it due to some kind f national pride (Same thing was done to old Steyr pistols if I recall), having nothing to do with the gun potential tu properly work as such, thus damaging the "collector value" (Don't get me wrong...I'd throw my arms around ANY cheap decent Argie regarding the crest status) since at least from my point of view it has nothing to do with the firearm history as such and equally compared to what any Bubba, American or Argentinian, could have done to it.

Some state that this was made to hide a rifle sale to Bolivia during the Chaco war (A childish effort if I might say), but I've seen around here a few low serial number 1891s (with As and Bs prefixes) still bearing the Argentinian crest, and according to the owners those guns were smuggled from Bolivia many years ago, so I have to disagree with that particular statemet; Apparently this was really done much later, around the late '50s, with a batch of Colt Sistema 1927 pistols -1911A1 clones made under license in Argentina and stamped with the Argentinian crest - sold to Bolivia and delivered by train during a military coup or other kind of political unrest along with machineguns, anti-tank shoulder weapons (PIATs?), heavy machineguns and other small weaponry.....common practice among the Argie government by the way since they'll later smuggle weapons to Ecuador (Early '90s with Menem as President) while they were more than a few shots being exchanged with us in our common border, even though they were observers and warrants of the peace agreement signed after the 1941 war between Ecuador and Peru