Why is the 42/1940 so hard to find intact? I'm thinking because of it being issued so early in the war?
I've got a nice one with a bolt mismatch.
I'm not 100% on this, but I've read that most of the 1940 rifles were sent to the Eastern Front in preparation for Barbarossa and were deployed there.
The fact is the War in Europe was fought and lost in the East. The vast majority of German military equipment, and resources, physical and material, disappeared into that bottomless pit.