Jump to content

Surviving WW2 MP40's


Recommended Posts

So I am new here and interested in WW2 armament. I am surprised that there are so few MP40's from WW2 and the apparent costs very high. Why is this? I know that the 98K and the MP40's were prolific. Were most destroyed after the war? A family member brought home a very nice 98K but I have never seen anyone with an MP40 bring-back. Was the MP40 used after WW2 by any other military as surplus?

 

Your thoughts appreciated.

 

Sam

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The MP40 was a very popular bring-back. There are a bunch of them on the NFA Registry. In the '80's I was a dealer and did a lot of gun shows in TX. It was not uncommon to have a WWII vet bring in an MP40 and want to sell it. Sadly, most did not have any papers and therefore only had value as parts kits. Knowledge of the NFA was not common back then and most vets could not believe that their gun was illegal and could not be made legal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Once I discovered transferable MGs from J. Curtis Earl's memorable catalogs in 1970, I kept at it up to the present. In 1970 or thereabouts came the revisions to the NFA laws after the enactment of the 1968 Gun Contol Act. Going back to the early 1950s, at retail and mail order gun stores offering them, deactivated MP40s could be purchased for as little as $15.95. Many came home with GIs and later, in the 1950s, many, many more were imported by outfits interested in deactivating them and selling them as decorators. The '68 Ammesty resulted in large numbers of previously unregistered MP40s being put on the books, both live and deactivated. Post Amnesty, no more original, live MGs could be registered, and with ATF formulating new rules to "remanufacture" and register MGs for private possession, many more MP40s were built and registered. Such remanufacture and registration ended in May, 1986. There are many, many hundreds of MP40s registered during those 18 years from the '68 Ammesty to the cutoff in '86 for private possession.

A live, excellent condition, registered MP40 in the early mid-1970s cost from about $200 to $400 depending on dealer. J. C. Earl's prices, as an example, were very high for the day and other dealers always had much less expensive offerings.
Prices have dramatically escalated due to demand far outstripping supply to where we are now.
Above is a very basic description of what happened during early years of post-war NAF34 and "collector" MGs. FWIW

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I acquired my MP40 out of the estate of the vet who brought it home. Thankfully he had registered it during the '68 amnesty. That has got to be a common story.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

They made less than a million of them. They are far more common in the movies than in real life. Compare that to the 14.7 million Mausers that were produced. NCO's carried them, unless an enlisted soldier got one as a battlefield pickup. They are not exactly common, although they are so useful that a lot of them were were preserved and used in other countries or saved as war souvenirs. The MP-40 is available, but expensive because of the demand because they are iconic German WWII guns.

Edited by DARIVS
Link to comment
Share on other sites

So since these guns are pre Hughes act or manufactured before 1986, how does the Hughes act affect sales of the MP40?

 

The Hughes Amendment fixed the number of registered transferable and pre-May sales sample MGs at the level attained on May 19, 1986. No more live MGs could be manufactured and registered after that date. Import and transfer of restricted MG sales samples were newly saddled with a PD letter request for demonstration of the MGs required for possession by an FFL/SOT.

Hughes artificially limited the supply of available MGs, MP40s included, creating another new impetus for increasing their sales values.

Supply and demand.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

So since these guns are pre Hughes act or manufactured before 1986, how does the Hughes act affect sales of the MP40?

 

The Hughes Amendment fixed the number of registered transferable and pre-May sales sample MGs at the level attained on May 19, 1986. No more live MGs could be manufactured and registered after that date. Import and transfer of restricted MG sales samples were newly saddled with a PD letter request for demonstration of the MGs required for possession by an FFL/SOT.

Hughes artificially limited the supply of available MGs, MP40s included, creating another new impetus for increasing their sales values.

Supply and demand.

 

Thanks BRMCll for answering my question. Makes sense now the way you explained it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I went to a local range shoot with LE and brought my MP40. There was a retired Norwegian Special Forces soldier there. When he shot the MP40 it was obvious he was very familiar with them. He told me they were in service in Norway until 1994.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I acquired my MP40 out of the estate of the vet who brought it home. Thankfully he had registered it during the '68 amnesty. That has got to be a common story.

 

I got my BNZ41 from the son of the WWII Vet who brought it home from the war. The gun was registered in the 1968 Amnesty to the son who was in his early 20's at the time and in college. He was in his 70's when I got it from him. The C&R guns are getting hard to find (I guess collectors are holding on to them).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

They are out there but tend to be on the expensive side... back in the day--pre-86--you could get the part kits fairly cheap and then install and register a reciever (made out of sheet metal) they call these tube guns... obviously, not totally original WW2, but a lot of people selling them don't understand, or lack the knowledge, or leave out the fact that its a tube gun... lots of stamps out there, you can get them from Poland on ebay so they fake them as well... you just have to be careful when looking for them.

 

There is one on Proxibid (auction) that's a bringback, registered in 1968, single family owned and its in pretty stellar condition... my guess is 28k. When they come up for auction, ignore Rock Island... they bring crazy prices on everything they sell because the people that go there are crazy rich and dont care what they spend... I think the other day a MP40 went for 35k, without Buyers premium and tax... so it would be something like out the door 43k thats crazy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

×
×
  • Create New...