As a dealer, I learned really quick to only buy grade A or Very-Good to New, grade rifles. The B, C grades, "shooter" grade & Fair to Poor, just weren't worth the money. Good condition is even a crap shoot, but often all you can get. Unfortunately, the days of cheap surplus are gone. So I understand the current desire to buy the lesser grades.
Yes there's plenty off them actually there are more garage A then junk out there most bye them for collecting so they sit in the closet for yrs your very smart
Ding ding ding we have a winner. The truth is that these guns were well used before they wound up in Ethiopia and then lived in a rough abrasive environment for years and probably never got cleaned and were then thrown in a warehouse for 30 or 30 years. I have no interest in wall hangers or shot out barrels and by the time you pay 1-200 for "hand select" your paying the same price for a pretty good gun from a show that hasn't been severely abused in the Ethiopian desert. Save your money and buy one from somewhere you can actually look at it first.
Imagine telling someone in the 20th century that a rifle in this condition would cost 500 dollars. I don’t think anyone up until ‘recently’ would have considered such weapons as more than scrap metal. (Especially shortsighted governments)
I'm 68 and I just see these as junk, I have some nice guns.Get a nice gun that you can see before you buy. I feel sick looking at that heap. I had to take another blood pressure pill.
Oof, that is DIRTY. Between my son and I, we have purchased 5 rifles from RTI over the past year; and your P14 is the dirtiest yet. I feel for your upcoming cleaning process. I just yesterday, reassembled my M1917 from RTI, after a full teardown and cleaning. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, and look forward to taking it to the range in a week or two.
I live in South Africa, and guess what? When the British decided to once again challenge the Boere Republics, they had the long lee as their service rifle, along with the older lee metford. Due to this, long lees can be picked up for decent prices and aren't that rare. I bought a deactivated long lee 1902 that was shortened for cadet use in 1909 for R1500, that is around 80$. I know its not a ''long'' lee, but it still a very good price. It likely saw service close to the end of the second Anglo Boer war.
@@solinvictus39 I now realize that I have made a bad comparison. I did however forget to add that I have seen Long Lees sell on auction here for around $267.
it baffles me how in the US there is no proof bench for every single firearm imported. RTI sells dangerous guns that may blow up at the first fired round. if you would try to sell something like that in the EU you would go out of buisness and right into jail.
I had tuned out of the milsurp market for awhile, wow. I would just give up on RTI. I had similar experiances with IMA. Just a few years ago i got a Canadian Enfield, imaculate at auction for $415
I live in the U.K. and due to our laws it’s difficult to own lots of different service rifles however with shotguns u can own as many as u want and I have a collection of old service rifles converted to .410 I have a p14 with volly sight in pretty good condition
@@solinvictus39 I will address all of that firstly I’m not ok with grooming gangs however I’m not sure anyone in the USA can really say anything about that as the USA has a far higher rate of sex trafficking and grooming than the U.K. , hate speech law isn’t much different to your own if I’m honest I can link u plenty of cases of people in the USA being arrested for things that say and Indian PM ? He was born in the U.K. and we don’t vote for our PM we only vote for our local MPs and mine is born and bred in my area you see if u get all your information about a country from the internet u will have a very strange view of a country the U.K. by literally every single social indicator from life expectancy to crime education to social systems the U.K. scores higher than the USA yes we can’t just go and buy a rifle if we want but u know what it’s not the end of the world
@@solinvictus39 wow 1 in 9 children v 1 in 20 children in the USA have been sexual assaulted not good still at least u can racially abuse people if u want
My dads best friends gun shop my dad works at got DP rifles for 11.99 each or buy the whole crate of 10 for 9.99 each. I cant tell you how many crates of P-14 DP's they bought. They would strip them down, build magnum rifles out of the actions, toss all the parts and use the Cosmoline soaked stocks for firewood with the british crates in the winter in the wood burning stove in the shop. I remember the myth you couldn't reactivate P-14 DP's because they were dangerous and I think every small gun shop in the US proved that wrong! I kept a couple numbers matching what looked to be unfired P-14s for myself. Working with a guy on repairing the chamber.
@@bad74maverick1 I got a "Carribean drill rifle P14" from international\century arms 30 years ago. They were pretty rough on the outside but mint inside. Still have it, and a fine shooter. The action is over built and well suited for conversion.
I’ve bought from HL and everything I got looked better than that! 😂 I got one Spanish Mauser with a broken stock, but it was fixed by their in-house gunsmith. Not pretty but definitely a functional fix. RTI doesn’t even fix their broken stuff before they ship it.
*Overvalued - yes - bad rifle? No. That rifle is INTACT* Even if it is beat up from countless battles. Searching the history of a particular rifle, is part of the fun. And if it still shoots to the standards of THEN, well hell.... it can be a lot of fun owning a piece of history like that. I personally like a rifle that shows the genuine decades of getting the hell beat out of it by Soldiers. That rifle has probably been in all kinds of encounters, and very likely -- it has seen some battles too. The days of lying-ass old men making up myths about old firearms, is long gone as well. [I think of the "Irish Blondes" No 4 MK II's.] That was all total horseshit, to imaginarily increase the value of those rifles. Today - damn near anybody can walk into a firearms dealer, and run a simple YT search on exactly Make and Model they are looking at. There will be all kinds of videos and information about it.
My first rifle was an Eddystone P-14 I bought from Springfield Sporters in the early 1980’s for $89. It was in reasonably good condition with no missing parts. Placing a round down the muzzle like you did revealed about 1/8” of clearance to the case mouth. It had a dark bore with what appeared to be good rifling and no pitting. The crown was good too. My rifle shot horribly. My father, an excellent shot (Korean War US Marine) couldn’t hit the target consistently at 100 yards. It lived in my safe for years until one day I took it to the range. I placed a large piece of newsprint at 25 yards and took a few shots. All the hits went in sideways. Well, that answered that question. Eventually I got a new barrel from Criterion installed and now it’s one of my most accurate rifles. Don’t be surprised if yours shoots bad.
Jesus 1980s 89 was huge. That was like 3 days of pay right there. Imagine if you bought a MG or a polytech legends ak back then. You'd be a very rich man. Tec 9 mg especially was an amazing investment in hindsight. For reference the polytech legend is now worth 4-8k and initially costed maybe 250-350, making it a rare example of a gun able to compete with machine gun pricing increases
That looks like a reasonable 200 dollar rifle. Track your hours restoring it. Add whatever your worth plus the price of the missing parts and see how it stacks up against that 750 doller secondary market gun when you're done!
So I recently came into possesion of a 1916 Spanish Carbine. My buddy shot it and said it keyholed at 25 yards. He didn't have the funds to rebarrel it so he passed it on to me with a few rounds he handloaded. Did the muzzle test and it absolutely ate a round to the case neck. Broke down his reloads because he has a habit of underloading and i noticed he was using boat tail bullets. I had a box of FN Surplus 7MM Mauser lying around so I broke down a bullet and it was a flat base with the widest part of the projectile hidden under the case neck, similar to a 8MM Lebel as you stated in your RTI Lebel video. That video helped me realize he had a worn barrel, but still useable. The issue was he used the wrong projectiles and they were undersized for the bore. Shot a few FN rounds at the range and they left neat round holes. Have a perfectly servicable light carbine for hunting, only issue is I have to find specific projectiles for my handloading
If they get junk they can still make 3- 400 on the rifle while selling a rifle in good-excellent shape for 800-1500. Still have to factor in the shipping, import fees, taxes, and processing at RTI to sort the shipments. Still they are making a killing on some of these guns especially the lugers. Highly doubt the Ethiopians are saying we want top dollar for good shape loads when in reality they just pack pallet A and pallet B in a crate.
When these first became available, years ago I bought both the P-17 and P-14 in good condition for $500. I just imagine what I could sell them for today if I still had them!
I to got both P14 & M17 at the same time but a good bit sooner $90 & $75. the M17 has big chinese wrighting branded into the left side of the stock, I always wondered what it said😊
I have a PVC tube capped at one end that I fill with mineral spirits. It's used for projects like this. Remove all the wood and let this barreled action soak in that for a couple of hours before you start cleaning it. That will help get the initial layers of filth off. Wipe Out bore cleaner would be a good choice for attempting to clean that sewer pipe of a barrel. It's worked very well for me. Good luck on your project.
Nice, I did the same thing with PVC for cleaning cosmoline off barreled actions. I used to use mineral spirits in it but discovered hot water works even better, and I can just dump it down the drain when I am done. I got sick of capturing and filtering the mineral spirits each time, but it would work good for one that's really covered in grime and not just cosmo. I capped mine at both ends with a screw-on cap at one end so I can tilt the tube back and forth every now and then to help loosen chunks of cosmo. Wipe Out foaming bore cleaner is great stuff
@Toolness1 anything from RTI is gonna need every chemical you can throw at it lol. If he works on that bore enough with Wipe Out it will definitely improve. I've been very impressed with that stuff.
I remember going to gun shows and different surplus stores, Springfield Sporters, Kassnar imports, Navy Arms back in the 1980s and early 90s. The quality was much better and cheaper. Understandably, things are drying up, newer laws are against importing surplus arms, and so on. The quality is gonna get worse, and the prices are gonna get higher.
Wow, I thought the Ishapore 2A I bought back in 2006 was rough. It's a museum piece compared to that, and only like $250 at the time. The Golden Era of surplus is truly gone.
The golden age of surplus was the 1960s. Lugers were $30, Springfield '03s were $30, Enfield jungle carbines were $18, Browning FN .32cal pistols were $11 and on and on. You could mail order them with postal money orders and the mail man would deliver them. Most surplus ammo was $6 for 100 rounds. Those were the good old days. Sure wish that I had bought some. Good Luck, Rick
@@dawsonschmidt3714 The minimum wage was $1.50 per hour. A regular job like running a gas station was $2.50 per hour. A Union apprentice laborer was $5 per hour. Gas was $0.25 per gallon and cheap beer was $1 per six pack. I usually worked 80 hour weeks to have enough money for the things that I wanted and to save for college. Most Dads were working 40 to 60 hours per week. That allowed for a decent house and two cars. We lived comfortably. Once I started college, I only worked 80 hour weeks in the summer. Lots of good memories for me. Good Luck, Rick
I remember the Navy Arms, Century Arms, CDNN $149 M-1 Carbines $249 M-1 Garands, Blue Sky Imports, $250 for a reenacting "cap gun" was extremely reasonable, SKS $70! These P14 and P17 $225. And they were in nicer shape.
Pedantry aside, there was definitely a Golden Era of surplus in the post Cold War era when all the WaPa nations, then Russia, started dumping all their kit on the US. The one I really kick myself on was not picking up an SVT40 when they were like $300.
After a refreshing stroll through 241 posts slagging you for spending your own money as you see fit, because they bought their rifles in perfect condition in a different market, I thought I offer something constructive. There is a Figure-8 fishhook Iraqi Jaish marking on the receiver. Your rifle went from USA to UK to Iraq to Ethiopia to USA in the span of 110-odd years.
Two points: 1: Of course it is an Enfield! I think the point he was trying to make that it wasn’t a Lee Enfield, which it isn’t as he is correct it uses the Mauser action, so if anything it would be a Mauser Enfield as Enfield in the name refers to the rifling. This naming convention started in this series with the Lee Metford. 2: What on earth does he mean by “stronger action”? For some weird reason it has always been assumed that the front locking Mauser action is stronger than the rear locking Lee action - if this was true, which it isn’t, where are all the pictures of Lee Enfield failures? There is only one and this was actually caused by the rifle being hit by a bullet going down the barrel. What every supporter of the Mauser action don’t like about the Lee Enfield is it is by far the quickest to cycle military bolt action rifle made in significant numbers - it has a shorter action, it’s rotation is less, it cocks on close, it has a larger magazine and the position of the bolt & trigger all allow for skilled riflemen to cycle quickly and fire.
Years ago late 80s I worked in Virginia they had these Enfield s for isale in a plastic barrel at Walmart for $55 and they all look like they were dragged behind a truck junk remember when these buyers get surplus rifles they sometimes pay by the pound not per rifle
Buying any old 303 British calibre rifle of the net should be treated same as getting a used car sight unseen thats been driven through many winters in the rust belt.The salt eats the barrel and the chassis just the same and the drivers/soldiers treat both them as beaters . Your just the last guy before the crusher
The enfield part of the name refers to the rifling. Lee-enfields are a lee action with enfield rifling Lee-Metford is the same action on Metford rifling
@@buckfizzard291 You might have dodged a bullet (pun intended). If the video represents a B-grade rifle from RTI, then imagine what C-grade is. I'll wait for an unboxing video before even spending $200.
In my experience with surplus firearms, damaged wood like this one is always the hardest to clean and restore. Many times I cleaned up the metal and just bought a nice stock separately. Not sure how hard these are to find because now the surplus market is so expensive. Best of luck. I’d like to see the end result of this.
Good Luck with your rifle.... jmo I would have gone for the 200 hundred bucks personally....I'm done with RTI.... Good luck finding the parts.... be well.
Back in 1990 these were $99 and too much then........I dont care what the market is---anyone who would pay more than $200 for this junk is a sucker. Only surplus rifle still worth money is the Nagant.....but up from $99 to $300 is getting too high.
Having bought from RTI several times I’ve found it to be like playing the lottery, sometimes you get something fine and others you get something that’s rough. But few that I couldn’t make nice without the little bit of effort.
You do seem to get your fair share of project guns. That’s half the fun though brining them back. Pretty cool it has the original volley sights through. Looking forward to the follow up vid. 👍
I remember when something in this condition wouldn't even be considered. My God, i am thinking about all the P14s in pawn shops and gin shows that I passed up for around $200 that look like safe queens compared to this rifle. I enjoy your channrl my friend. I like the regular guy feel of it. Thank you
In the early 1990's I had an FFL and there were many surplus P-14 rifles on the market in mostly VG condition with nice bores. Looking at my records, I see that I sold at least six in 1991. I paid as little as $74.50 and as much as $92.00 for them with several costing me $85.00. I understand that surplus military firearms are scarce now and I don't want to rain on your parade so I'll keep my opinion of that rifle to myself.
Crazy RTI overpriced. It is hard to find a really nice P14 but they still don't bring as much as a 1917. It is a case of rarity doesn't equal valuable. Century brought in a huge batch in early 1990's from India but were Wheedon rebuilds. Late 1980s into 1990s was the second golden age of surplus, RR really missed out.
The p14 didn't suffer none commonality of parts like the p17, Winchester rushed the development to get the 30-06 version to the army while Remington/Eddystone took more time to guarantee commonality of parts.
Crying about a 100+ year pld combat rifle, that probably is a combat rifle. It probably came out of some forgotten arms depot in India or Pakistan. There are no parts for these rifles so to speak. Considering it's functional and probably fires, $500 isn't a bad price today. We aren't living pre-80s when these rifles were $50-$75 at a gunshow or a surplus outlet. This rifle other than the volley sights lacks any real historic value. A lot of us have these from 50+ years ago when they were arsenal refurbished for storage long before being put on the surplus market. The receiver would be a great base for a nice custom sporter in either 303, or a 3006, 270, etc. I always considered it sacrilege to butcher a really nice relic into a sporter, but beat to hell crap is perfect for it.
Stop paying these prices. That's why classic and aim are stuck with K31s. Also the 7.5 Swiss ammo is now 1.25+ a rd. Just stay away from B and C grades and companies like RTI.
This gun is a mess. Just at a glance if the rest are like this, it's not worth $500. Hell, I probably wouldn't even pay $300 for a broken stock, missing parts. missing every bit of finish on it, and a rusted out barrel. RTI is robbing people.
I bought a sporterized P-14 converted to 7mm magnum 30 years ago. It was the worst piece of crap that I've ever owned. Fire it one time and you couldn't eject the shell casing. You'd have to beat the bolt hammer with a hammer or against a tree to get the bolt to extract a round. I traded it for a 12 guage Remington 870 years ago. Don't buy one their nothing but a nightmare.
It looks like it came out of Tutankhamun's tomb, definitely not the Golden Age of Surplus anymore, looks like $500.00 is about the price you are going to pay for surplus firearms now days no matter what condition, and that's a big Nope! for me.
RTI should mean Rusty Trash Imports. I was too young to buy anything from the pre 1968 surplus market but was able to get inon the post 1986 surplus market. I truly feel sorry for the young people who only have this picked over trash available to add to their collections.
I understand you need to create content, and I have been going to gun shows and collecting military since 1973 when I was still in High school. People need to stop buying this truly beat to hell milsurp from RTI. The condition of this item, the P-14, is a horror story worth not more than $150 in todays money, to me at least. I appreciate your love for miitary weapons, and I can look at these unboxing from you and other You Tubers as warnings to other collectors. The only weapons worth a damn from Royal Tiger were the M1 Carbines from 2 years ago. Maybe the Carcanos are OK,..but all their Mausers and Enfields seem to be crap unless you want to put in lots of work finding replacement parts.
That's not a Mauser bolt. The Mauser bolt cocks the firing pin on opening and the P-14 bolt, which other than caliber is the same as a M-1917, cocks the firing pin on closing the bolt. The Mauser bolt has the safety at the rear of the bolt and Enfield has a safety on the right side of the receiver
I can believe people are still buying this garbage. Like maybe if you have a museum but overall most of you people paying 500+ expecting a decent rifle must've missed the part where they found them in an open air goat barn in Africa. At this point its your own fault that you let RTI scam you
They did not have a "sell", they had a sale.. Please understand the difference. So many times I see people saying and posting that they have something for sell.....no, it's for sale, not for sell. How on earth do you get the two confused?
Dude. I am a fan of it. Have one. That thing is a heap bro. Volley sights worth the price though. I would not feel comfy putting any MK7 through it fo sho'.
US firearm manufacturers actually had to pay the gun maker Mauser a royalty on the P14l and P17 rifles since the design was deemed a direct patient infringement after WW1 by several countries patient courts.
Well, I understand you are making videos and are hopefully being paid to do so, but I'd have to say that you will probably be an old man before you make a dollar on that rifle. I had a buddy back in the day who would have called that P14 a "boat anchor"!
As someone who grew up seeing barrels full of grab and go mid-grade surplus rifles for dirt cheap, this is almost sickening to see someone paying this much money for a trash grade surplus. Yea, the market dictates price, but goddamn.
Have a suggestion for you....worked for a gunsmith as a kid been restoring gun ever since....the crack in the wood use Mccracken glue it flows deep into the wood...after it dries use 0000 steel wool with linseed oil and 30% turpentine mixed a rub down the wood use generously do several times to desired look and clear metal and or wood with ATF with 0000 steel wool will rid rust not finish....you will be amazed...good luck have used this method for years..with good great results. Shoe
First rifle I bought was a M-1917 in wonderful shape. I think I paid $500 for that, but that was years ago of course. I've never came across a P-14 for a fair price that wasn't in poor shape.
