A friend of mine brought me this Mauser Mod.98. The gun is in excellent condition, unfortunately not in original condition. Something that struck me as odd was the very low serial number 636G.
I know little or nothing about Mauser rifles. I was hoping that someone here was a little more knowledgeable. The rifle also appears to have Nazi markings if that makes any difference. The serial number matches on receiver, barrel, and floor plate. Is this an unusually old rifle, is there anything special about this gun, at $200 did he pay to much?
Looks like a sporterized Kar98K, standard infantry rifle of the German army in WWII.
On the front receiver ring, under the front scope base, should be a manufacturer and date code.
The floorplate appears to be madeof stamped metal, indicating late war production, and bears the letters “byf” which was a code for the Mauser factory in Orbendorf.
As far as the low serial number from what I have read the Germans did not run serial numbers consecutively, each production run would have its own set of numbers often overlapping the same range of number from the previous year.
The K98’s I have seen will have a two-digit number year code somewhere near the byf factory code. Some factories also used the 4 digit system as well. You will also see a small Nazi eagle with something that looks like WaA and then a number. These are known as Waffenamt inspector codes as far as I know.
