USMC sniper

[mitchell6776]

I have no skin in this game. Just curious if this is a legitimate sniper.

https://www.gunbroker.com/item/869986867

[John Beard]

I vote not legitimate.

J.B.

[Promo]

No. Someone paying 16k for a fake will be disappointed.

[Ironlip]

Should the bolt and bolt handle be bright? On a National Match or a Sporter, yes, but that seems odd in a rifle intended for combat.

Also, those mounts appear to be the correct type, but all the ones I have seen in the past have been blued. Is that finish correct?

[lyman]

looks to me like, as mentioned, a parts gun,

too many finish variations, (example the brown windage knob and magazine floor plate, vs the barrel and rear sight for example) for me to think otherwise

[Tom Trevor]

2,176.50 sold. OOPS wrong 03 the Marine Pearl harbor sold for this.

[clintonhater]

2,176.50 sold.

What? Sold for $16,500+. However, it was worth every penny, because not only is it "blue chip," according to seller's modest description, it's "super rare"! Got to step up to the plate for "super rare."

Sure wish Steve Norton was still around.

[lyman]

What? Sold for $16,500+. However, it was worth every penny, because not only is it "blue chip," according to seller's modest description, it's "super rare"! Got to step up to the plate for "super rare."

Sure wish Steve Norton was still around.

yep $16525,

the scope and blocks are probably worth half that, or close,


CplNorton is still around, just not here that often

[cplnorton]

I need to check over here more often. lol I've been fixing up an old 68 Camaro to take my kids cruising in, so that has been occupying my time lately. :)

But no I concur the rifle has no chance of being real. We actually have a Unertl group and several pointed out some of the bidding looked suspicious.

His description too, well I have no clue where he is getting that info from, but none of the history he describes of the Marine Sniper program is accurate either. Like how he describes SA built the Marines a 1000 snipers, and put in a order for an additional 2500.

The Marines received 1750 scopes and only converted for sure 250 of the 1047 NM rifles they started the program with. It never details exactly for sure how many were converted as even the Marines Corps didn't know in 1945. But it states they never converted them all.

My own personal opinion is they probably only converted the 250 and not many more. Only the first four Marine Divisions had them and each Division received roughly 50. So the 250 shipped to the Pacific in 1943 were more than enough to outfit the four Divisions. Even looking at the counts of the rifles in the Divisions, the 250 was way more than they needed. Especially since they really weren't used much till Okinawa.

Also in 1951 the Marines state they can not supply the required 100 Unertl Snipers to each Marine Division as prescribed by the T/O. Which there were only 2 Marine Divisions at that time. So it seems to imply that less than 200 Unertl Snipers existed in 1951 in the Marine Corps.


Unfortunately someone will learn a hard lesson on buying this. :(

[clintonhater]

Unfortunately someone will learn a hard lesson on buying this.

Not so sure about that, Steve. Maybe some day, if he runs into someone like you. But he obviously swallowed the seller's "super rare" hype hook, line, & sinker. Over & over I've seen, the thicker the BS is spread, the more greedily it's lapped up.

[cplnorton]

Should the bolt and bolt handle be bright? On a National Match or a Sporter, yes, but that seems odd in a rifle intended for combat.

Also, those mounts appear to be the correct type, but all the ones I have seen in the past have been blued. Is that finish correct?

The books say they can have a bright polished bolt, but I don't think there is any chance this is correct on an original as produced rifle. In July 1942 the Marines took inventory of all their NM rifles they planned on using for the Sniper program. They had a 1047 of them, and they notate that the bolts of those rifles are bright polished. So they were ordered to take All of the polished bolts and put them thru a bluing process and put them into storage marked Sniper equipment.

Six months later the order is given to start mounting scopes. So those bolts were blued long before the first scope was ever mounted. Not only should every Marine Unertl Sniper have a blued bolt, but all the Marine NM rifles at that time should have had a blued bolt. Even the ones not converted to a sniper rifle.

The finish on the mounts on the scope are correct. They are anodized. Over time the Anodizing will start to turn colors. Originally they were black, but that is normal for these scopes.

[cplnorton]

Not so sure about that, Steve. Maybe some day, if he runs into someone like you. But he obviously swallowed the seller's "super rare" hype hook, line, & sinker. Over & over I've seen, the thicker the BS is spread, the more greedily it's lapped up.

Yeah you are correct. I know who this seller is. He sets up at the one collector show I set up at. I don't know him personally, just in passing.

Here maybe a year or two ago, there were two rifles sold at the RIA auction. One rifle was owned by a author and it was in his some of his books. The other rifle had fake paperwork forged by a computer saying the Marine Corps Museum sold it. Both rifles sold for about 40k each. The sad thing is, the same buyer bought both. :( Neither rifle was real.

He wrote me maybe a week after the sale to talk to me about the rifles to find out anything more. I sat for an hour writing him different emails and erasing each one. I couldn't even formulate what to say to that. So I told him to call me. He was one of the nicest guys. He had saved up and used a chunk of his retirement savings to get his holy grail rifles and he thought because one had been in a book and the other had paperwork, he would be ok.

I love this hobby and the people I meet, but that was by far one of the hardest phone conversations I've had. There are a lot of dishonest people in this field.

By the way I still am very thankful for your article you sent me that you wrote on Steven's. If anyone on here is a Steven's scope researcher, Clintonhater is by far the most knowledgeable person I have ever ran across on them. He wrote and published a article that is light years ahead of any other research I have seen on the topic. I have it filed in my archives and I read that actually a lot.

On a side note, you will laugh at this. Remember my famous 6 vs 8 loop case argument years ago on here. You and I talked about this a lot back in the day. I found a bunch of unpublished photos of WWI Marine Snipers at sniper school, at Quantico, buried at a regional Archive location. In there is a pic of a bunch of them in class for the Winchester A5 scope. All have 6 loop leather cases on their shoulders. lol I figured you would get a kick out of that.

[clintonhater]

Remember my famous 6 vs 8 loop case argument years ago on here.

Remember? My head's still aching!

[Kragrifle]

I am familiar with this seller. I suspect there is some spurious bidding. Not too long ago he “sold” a Rock Island 1903 for over $7000, way more than it’s true value,

A quick question- I thought the Marine Corp built these rifles , no?

[lyman]

I am familiar with this seller. I suspect there is some spurious bidding. Not too long ago he “sold” a Rock Island 1903 for over $7000, way more than it’s true value,

A quick question- I thought the Marine Corp built these rifles , no?


I went thru and looked at some of the current auctions,

one, the 'pre python' Colt 357 revolver is a hot mess,

nothing wrong with the gun, but the Colt 357 was not a 'Pre Python' revolver, it is a different model,


there are several folks that have bid on more that one of his auctions (a couple are people I have sold to in the past on GB,, doubtful they are shills) but then again, having people buy several firearms from the same dealer is not exactly uncommon,

[cplnorton]

I am familiar with this seller. I suspect there is some spurious bidding. Not too long ago he “sold” a Rock Island 1903 for over $7000, way more than it’s true value,

A quick question- I thought the Marine Corp built these rifles , no?

Yes they did. They built them at the Philly Depot.

They really are basically a NM rifle with a cut handguard, blued polished bolt, and the blocks added. There are minor tweaks and on some the Marines replaced the barrel at the end of a shooting season.

But they are not the custom builds that snipers are today.

[Kragrifle]

One other question-everyone seems to think that every Marine Corp rifle has had a Hatcher hole added. I have heard this is not true so that some rifles missed this modification.

[cplnorton]

One other question-everyone seems to think that every Marine Corp rifle has had a Hatcher hole added. I have heard this is not true so that some rifles missed this modification.

There is a lot of incorrect information floating around about these rifles out there.

Now I should preface this with, a normal Marine rebuild M1903, rebuilt prior to the fall of 1938, will not show the additional gas escape hole. Everyone calls that the Hatcher hole, but I call it the Borden hole. Because when you see the actual testing, approval, and implementation on that hole, Hatcher had absolutely nothing to do with it. So I call it the Borden hole to honor the correct man.

But on a WWII built Marine Sniper rifle, I have never seen one that didn't have the Borden hole. So I do not agree with those who say some rifles missed it.

Now let me explain. All Unertl Snipers were built on NM rifles. This is repeated over and over in the docs. The last two shipments of NM rifles to the Marines were in 1937 and 1940. These serials make up the vast majority of all Unertl snipers found. These rifles also had the Borden hole drilled into them by SA before they even shipped to the Marines. So just by the fact of this alone, almost all found will have a factory drilled additional gas escape hole.

The Marines NM rifles wore thru barrels very quickly. They were sent to the teams first and they kept track of every round fired out of them. I've seen several mentions that by the time they were almost to a 1000 rounds, they wanted to replace them.

The rifles were returned at the end of each NM season and rebarreled if needed.

I have never seen a Marine team rifle made in 1936 and previous that has had it's original barrel. All I have seen have been rebarreled with a 1938 or newer barrel on them and have the additional gas escape hole.

Otherwise every team rifle I have ever seen was rebarreled at the time when the Marines were also drilling the Borden hole in the receiver.

I always say there is a chance for anything to happen. But I have never seen any WWII Marine snipers that didn't have that hole, that is both the Unertl and the Mann Niedner's built during WWII. The Marines were building Mann Niedners in WWII as well, the books have missed that point. They built for sure 150 for the Marines and the Navy.

But I am of the belief that any WWII Marine sniper rifle should have that hole. I think it would take some compelling evidence to make me think otherwise.

[lyman]

interesting about the NM needing rebarreling,


in your studies, have you found any documentation on the rifles as converted, and used (like round counts etc) for each year ?

as in NM for 1932 , shot at Fort This (xxx rounds), Fort That (xxx rounds) , used in the Nationals at Perry, shot xxx rounds, ?

[cplnorton]

interesting about the NM needing rebarreling,


in your studies, have you found any documentation on the rifles as converted, and used (like round counts etc) for each year ?

as in NM for 1932 , shot at Fort This (xxx rounds), Fort That (xxx rounds) , used in the Nationals at Perry, shot xxx rounds, ?


Yeah I found some of the personal journals of some of the famous Marine team captains. They wrote on topics such as that and how they trained for the teams in their journals.

I have seen some of the round counts for competitions but off the top of my head I don't remember really many. I know for the most part once the season started they didn't shoot much outside of competition. So round count was only the rounds fired in actual competition. I've seen quite a few mentions of the round counts and such before the season started. Such as those that got the team ready for competition.

It was sort of neat as they actually came up with a happy medium over the years. In the beginning they used to train for months before the seasons stated, but they found that training that long made the Marines tired of shooting before the season was done and the scores suffered. Then they tried a shorter training schedule, but then the shooters weren't prepared.

I can't remember what they determined was the best in the end for sure, but I want to say they ended up at somewhere about 4-6 weeks of training before the shooting season started. I sort of remember they stating something along the lines they liked about the 300ish round count on the rifle barrel as the season started.

Team shooters actually traveled with two rifles each, in case one started to shoot erratically or something on the rifle broke. Of course they traveled with armorers, but they tried not to do anything major to the rifles past minor part swaps and tweaks.

At the end of each season every team rifle was returned to the Marine Depot and was reworked if needed. That is when they would swap the barrel if it warranted it. Once the barrel was swapped on the NM rifle, it no longer served on the Marine teams, but actually became a Marine Special Target. The Marines kept Special targets for all Marine Competitions like the Elliot Cup.

It was sort of funny that too that the Marines had to outlaw guys working on their own rifles. Some would actually break down their rifle on the firing line and do tweaks to the rifle in the middle of a competition. That was later outlawed by the Marines because of obvious reasons. :)