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I just turned the double nickels (55), but have been around milsurp firearms all my life. Have had an active interest in them for probably the last forty years. Yes, I do remember the "good old days" when Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward had wooden barrels of milsurps and for under a twenty dollar bill, you could reach into the barrel and dig out what ever you wanted. Then you would bring it home and tear it all apart. Out came the saw to cut the stock back and the hacksaw to shorten the barrel. If you were "affluent", you would dig out the Black and Decker hand drill and drill holes in the receiver and hope they would align enough to mount a scope on them.

Yes, folks, the statute of limitations has expired, so I can now confess to my earlier crimes, and I am sure a bunch of us older folks will agree. New commercial rifles were a lot more money than a teenage kid could afford by mowing lawns and such. I used to hunt with a group of five guys and we all had milsurp rifles (thou whoever heard of that term back then?). One guy had an 1891 Argentine Mauser, one guy had a .303 Enfield, another a K98 Mauser that his dad brought back from WW2, and I had a Rock Island 1903. The last guy never had any rifles, so he borrowed his uncle's 28 guage shotgun for bird hunting.

I really got involved with milsurp collecting back around 1995, as I suddenly found I had a few bucks left each month after finishing child support payments. I was looking for something and ran across an ad in the local paper by Big 5 and they were selling Mosin Nagants and Enfields. I picked up two Enfields that afternoon and the rest of the story is history. I got my C&R license in February of 2003, but I think I was a little late in getting it. By that time, my collection was standing at around 45 milsurps and in the last year and a half, I have only added about fifteen more, making sixty at the present time.

There you have it. The history of my life, where it comes to milsurping.
Curt