Any leads, insight or advice appreciated.

Originally Posted by TexasAg

Any leads, insight or advice appreciated.

Oddly enough yes I do to all of those points.
But first what do you intend to do with it?
If you are intending it as a display item with firing ability the rifle you need is different to one I would suggest if you plan to be out the back blasting away for fun.

The leads part may take a while as I will contact the guy first to see if he is still interested in selling.

The best advice I can give you is watch what you buy, there are a lot of "rebuilt" weapons out there that while they look the part have post war manufactured parts included and as such the value of them is much lower than a "genuine" one with all the correct stamps and matching components.

(The rebuilds are ideal if you plan to give it significant use but I am opposed to using the genuine article as an ordinary rifle given their age and rarity).

Most of what you will find in the US are rebuilds but there are still a few complete ones around if you want a good genuine article I suggest Europe and the former eastern European nations are still awash with them so you can get a good one for a reasonable price (I got both of mine for around $11,000) from a guy in Finland but had them evaluated in Germany before purchase to ensure they were what they seemed.

Be aware of post war manufactured ones as well, East Germany, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia manufactured and used them some until the late 1980s and Argentina also manufactured them until about 1952.

Thanks, sir. Your post brings up some interesting points I hadn't really thought through. I would like an authentic, operating one with stamps, matching, etc. that I would mostly just look at, but maybe shoot a clip occasionally. But it would also be fun to have a shooter that could be a rebuild or post-war model. So I guess my ideal is to have two, a shooter and a collector's piece.

As far as a shooter goes you can find them anywhere, I have seen some very nice ones for sale in the US for around $12,000-$20,000 which have obviously been rebuilt from ones "liberated" during WW2 and returned with returning service personnel and a mixture of new and used parts perfectly good as a regular use item.

To be honest I only know of one genuine article in Germany at the moment a 1944 model but that has some issues that only the buyer could work out as I do not know the US regulations on importing such a weapon and I do not know the German rules on exporting what is effectively and undocumented automatic weapon (it was found in a cellar).

If I can ever get the wife to agree to it I would buy this one myself just to save it from European bureaucracy but she seems to have a fixation with wasting money on a house and food for some reason (woman who can understand them).

Unfortunately you cannot import a full-auto weapon into the US. So it has to be one that's already here, or a semi that gets converted back.

Good to know, I am gradually learning the basics of firearms laws world wide thanks to the STG-44.

We operate on a slightly different system where as long as you have the right license and permits you can import anything.

Although I am still no closer to understanding German law as they seem more interested in eliminating the Nazi past than an other reason regarding these items.