Value of a haenel & suhl 1917?

Hi guys, just picked up a 1917 Gew98 from one of the range officers where i shoot. Bit of history first, was brought back by a digger in 1918, gave it to his son when he died who stuck it in his roof for 30 years,until the bloke i bought it off got it off him ( they're mates). It is 99% matching(bolt and all,see below why not 100%) the stock markings still very visible and nice eagles everywhere. BUT...somehow the bloke lost the saftey & cleaning rod over the years, and the wood has been redone as the damp ceiling was erroding it. The barrel has some exterior pitting that doesnt effect its shooting ability,bore is solid. Has a new saftey without a serial number,and length of rod also without numbers. I picked it up for $450, wonderi g what it's worth? Cheers

Would have to see it to even guess at a value, what is the serial number including suffix?

Safety and CR is small potatoes, doesn't hurt value to any real degree, though a CR will cost you $50 plus if you can even find one loose.

The Suhl consortium is the hardest of the lot to place a rarity too, Storz states 500k were made by them (from recollection) and if this is true they shared serial numbers and there is no way to tell who made the most of the three firms involved. All we can do is guess by reported-known rifles which made the most, though it is probably fairly equally divided between them based upon what little we know.

Do some pictures and we will tell you more about the rifle and give an opinion to value. (in the US, Lewis would have a better grasp on the Australian market, he use to have a nice VCS before he went to the 98k variants.) I will say though that "wood has been redone" doesn't sound very promising. The stock is at a very minimum half a rifles value...

CM0087 said:

Hi guys, just picked up a 1917 Gew98 from one of the range officers where i shoot. Bit of history first, was brought back by a digger in 1918, gave it to his son when he died who stuck it in his roof for 30 years,until the bloke i bought it off got it off him ( they're mates). It is 99% matching(bolt and all,see below why not 100%) the stock markings still very visible and nice eagles everywhere. BUT...somehow the bloke lost the saftey & cleaning rod over the years, and the wood has been redone as the damp ceiling was erroding it. The barrel has some exterior pitting that doesnt effect its shooting ability,bore is solid. Has a new saftey without a serial number,and length of rod also without numbers. I picked it up for $450, wonderi g what it's worth? Cheers

Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply & info. My interest is the wehrmacht & WW2, so i'm not as knowledgeable with WW1(and im no small arms expert like you guys). The serial is 6568 "R".... Cheers!

An "r" block is pretty high, there is another report of an CGH/1917 in the "r" block but it isn't confirmed. It is possible they reached the "r" block though, the highest confirmed CGH/1917 is in the upper "p" block, so the "r" block isn't so far off to not be plausible.

You typed it in upper case, is it upper case of lower case "r"? While some made use of upper case suffix in the nazi era (Steyr-Brno), it doesn't seem to have occurred during the Imperial era. If it appears to be upper case it is probably a different character, this is a common problem with serial databases, ones that rely on blind reports or only collect data on serial ranges. It is my opinion that serial range studies, those that only seek to find a range, are of dubious value. Especially in the nazi era rifles, but also Imperial rifles, as when you get into acceptance patterns, you can see that the maker-date on the top of the receiver is not always who assembled the rifle.

Anyway, thanks for the report, very helpful.

No worries, thanks for sheading some light on my rifle.

It appears to be an upper case "R". There are two, one next to the number on the left side of the reciever below the serial number, and one closer to the "Gew 98" inscription, again near the serial. The former is a little hard to make out, but the latter certainly looks like an uppper case "R"

I'll get a picture and post it, any more info you could give me would be great

Cheers

Is the "R" under the serial like this one? If so, it is an "e" block. Often "e" is confused for other characters unless you have enough examples to differentiate between the characters.

Yeah, that looks like it.

The tail on the "E" is a little straighter from memory, but that looks like the character alright.