1918 WMO Gewehr 98 Not Turkish?

Stumbled across this 1918 dated WMO Gewehr 98 in my usual online search for my first matching Gew 98. I don't see the usual Turkish crescent on the top of the receiver on this one but I can't make out if the stock had any Imperial acceptance proofs either. Didn't bid on it as there were no pictures of any numbering on the metal parts but the seller claimed it was all matching with no import marks though they said they couldn't see an external serial number on the stock which also threw me for a loop. So was this one an Imperial German rifle or is did it just miss a crescent stamp on the receiver and is Turkish?

Nothing Turk about this one as far as I can see. Unfortunately the stock was sanded, otherwise I woulda pushed it higher. I was the underbidder. The stock serial was faint due to sanding. Can’t speak for the acceptance but likely the same, faint due to sanding.

cj556 said:

Nothing Turk about this one as far as I can see. Unfortunately the stock was sanded, otherwise I woulda pushed it higher. I was the underbidder. The stock serial was faint due to sanding. Can’t speak for the acceptance but likely the same faint due to sanding.

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Ah, thanks for the clarification, the lack of acceptance and stock serial is what was throwing me for a loop on this one. Shame that the stock was sanded, the metal looks excellent on this one. The beech stock was probably a beauty before the sanding

Yeah as Marc said, it's a rare gun, but unfortunately whacked pretty bad. I wouldn't feel bad if I had paid that much for it but I probably wouldn't have gone much higher, as it was pushing 2k with buyer premium and shipping.

1918s in general are probably the toughest wartime year in matching wartime trim with no postwar use. Amberg is by far the most common, but still hard to find. Goes downhill rapidly from there. I'd count unturked WMO up there with DWM and Suhl firms as nigh impossible. My DWM 18 likely won't change hands until I die, as I doubt I'd ever see another like it.

chrisftk said:

Yeah as Marc said, it's a rare gun, but unfortunately whacked pretty bad. I wouldn't feel bad if I had paid that much for it but I probably wouldn't have gone much higher, as it was pushing 2k with buyer premium and shipping.

1918s in general are probably the toughest wartime year in matching wartime trim with no postwar use. Amberg is by far the most common, but still hard to find. Goes downhill rapidly from there. I'd count unturked WMO up there with DWM and Suhl firms as nigh impossible. My DWM 18 likely won't change hands until I die, as I doubt I'd ever see another like it.

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Thanks Chris, I knew 1918s were rare so I thought I'd at least post this one for my own clarification. Didn't know they were approaching unicorn status though now that you mention it, I haven't seen a non Amberg 1918 for sale up until now. I would've thought 1914s would be the rarest wartime year given the high losses and 4 years of service those rifles had. Neat to see that they're still out there to be found!

I will get photos later, but I have a 1917 or 1918 Oberndorf, import stamped from CAI as "8mm Turkey". Only Turkish mark is a crescent stamp on the underside of the bolt handle ball. All German as far as I can tell. NM numbers, she was a total mismatch. Bore was good, but when I bought it (first rifle in 1993, Alaska), the lumber was in awful condition, and I didn't know anything about collecting. So I cleaned up and lightly sanded the stock.... Sorry. Also had some pitting under the upper handguard. In the attached pic 4th from the left. The M41 clone isn't legit, just a fun COVID build on a previously tapped receiver. Will confirm the G98 when I can look at it later today.

AN-94 said:

Thanks Chris, I knew 1918s were rare so I thought I'd at least post this one for my own clarification. Didn't know they were approaching unicorn status though now that you mention it, I haven't seen a non Amberg 1918 for sale up until now. I would've thought 1914s would be the rarest wartime year given the high losses and 4 years of service those rifles had. Neat to see that they're still out there to be found!

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Pound for pound, 1914 dated rifles are second behind 1918 in Imperial trim. In terms of absolute numbers, 1918 dwarfs the production of 1914 but that data is highly skewed around WMO and to a lesser extent, Amberg. Like everyone here has pointed out, true imperial WMO examples account for almost none of that. The Consortium, Simson, Danzig, Erfurt, DWM and 'H' are super comparable with how things went in 1914.

1914 dated items probably have a higher survival rate due to the fact these weapons were actually with soldiers. Much of the late war stuff was destroyed in a frantic attempt to gain compliance with the IAMCC, they simply went after the low hanging fruit. Contrary to how one would think it would go where the nicest items would be the ones retained. The gun in question, is awesome, I would be proud to own it in spite of the stock issues. Though, I'm partial to 1918 dated items and willing to accept stuff with problems from that year.

mauser1908 said:

Pound for pound, 1914 dated rifles are second behind 1918 in Imperial trim. In terms of absolute numbers, 1918 dwarfs the production of 1914 but that data is highly skewed around WMO and to a lesser extent, Amberg. Like everyone here has pointed out, true imperial WMO examples account for almost none of that. The Consortium, Simson, Danzig, Erfurt, DWM and 'H' are super comparable with how things went in 1914.

1914 dated items probably have a higher survival rate due to the fact these weapons were actually with soldiers. Much of the late war stuff was destroyed in a frantic attempt to gain compliance with the IAMCC, they simply went after the low hanging fruit. Contrary to how one would think it would go where the nicest items would be the ones retained. The gun in question, is awesome, I would be proud to own it despite the stock issues. Though, I'm partial to 1918 dated items and willing to accept stuff with problems from that year.

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Thanks for the detailed explanation. I also realize now that there was never a large occupation of Germany like there was in WWII that would have lead to more 1918s being brought back. I think we all wish the IAMCC had left larger limits in place to spare more Gewehr 98s. I hope that the rifle in question appears back on the forum since aside from the stock, it is a nice rifle and it would be nice to have a matching 1918 WMO in the reference.

IAMCC could have been much worse, they accepted early figures of destruction (pre-supervised) at face value, probably for political reasons and the SPD (Ebert) vigor for peace and disarmament. Too bad the Entente was so shortsighted looking for revenge and compensation rather than a lasting peace... It could have been worse as the Republicans (back when they reputable) wanted nothing to do with the League and a lengthy participation in the Rhine occupation. (Wilson was a stooge for the internationalists (so-called "progressives"), which the US has never recovered from and is worse now than ever before... and is directly at odds with this country's founding principles... Not from sympathy did the US reject Versailles and the League, but from rejection of interventionism and over the question of American sovereignty.)

Worse than Versailles was Potsdam and massive indoctrination of Germany after Hitler (as though Germans didn't already have one of the most civilized cultures the world has known - as though a Hitler couldn't happen to any civilization given the right conditions), -Japan received MacArthur's solid leadership in the aftermath of WW2 and Germany got one buffoon after another from America (and England)

**to stay on topic this rifle falls among the period of greatest change in WMO Turkish contract, the late e-block, German WMO are known much earlier, and after, but the e-block is where it began its final evolution back to "German", though due to destruction totals after the f-block survival rates are meager (you what to see rare, rarity really starts with the g-block!)