My brother picked up a rifle at a garage sale. He asked me to research it. Wow ! This turns out to be very interesting. By investigating alpha-numeric codes stamped in the metal it is a Model K98 Mauser that was manufactured during 1940 in Germany's Black Forest in a small town called Oberndorf. So looking at pictures I noticed that this rifle was 'different' than most. The stock is red-tinted and the metal parts look to be painted black, instead of the silver colored bare metal. Well it turns out that rifles like that were captured by the Russians. They picked up all the Nazi rifles from the battlefield, took them apart and preserved the stocks with red varnish and painted the metal to prevent rust and then put them back together hodgepodge-like (the serial numbers on parts no longer match) and then stored them. Even more interesting, they hated the Nazis so much they took the trouble to apply a hammer and a punch to deface the tiny swastikas that were stamped on the barrel. Wow. My imagination was reeling....What was the fate of the German soldier who carried that gun on that long trek eastward? Was he involved in that epic battle of Stalingrad? We will never know, except it is very probable his life was ended violently. I any event it is worth around 4x the price paid.
