WW2 weapons for sale
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Guides for these pieces
- Identifying a French bayonetChassepot, Gras, Lebel, Berthier, MAS 36: the blade section gives the model, the numbers tell you whether the piece is still matched.
- Selling militaria in France: what is allowed, what is notMedals, helmets, bayonets, deactivated weapons, inert ammunition: what may be sold freely, what is prohibited, and what to check before listing.
- Old munitions: what to doA century underground does not make a munition inert. How to recognise what is dangerous, who to call, and what you may lawfully keep.
Collecting Second World War weapons
The word covers very different legal realities. In France, edged weapons of the period, bayonets first, can be acquired and kept freely by an adult. Firearms are subject to a classification, and even a deactivated weapon is not freely sold: its transfer goes through a gunsmith and a declaration, with the deactivation certificate and marking that must accompany it. Checking that status before buying is part of examining the object, just like examining the metal.
Reading a bayonet
On a German bayonet, reading starts at the ricasso. The maker's name is stamped there until 1940, the year a three-letter lower-case code replaced it; the two-digit year and the military acceptance stamps complete the set. Matching numbers between blade and scabbard weigh heavily on the price: a matched pair sells for much more, which explains why numbers have been restruck to create them.
Daggers, the most copied
German dress daggers are among the most reproduced objects in all of militaria. Their production stopped in 1945, but copying began in the 1960s, in Solingen itself and then in Toledo, and much later in Asia; makers' logos are reproduced along the way. Added to that are blades repolished and then re-etched, and pieces reassembled from parts of different origins. For long arms, the most common confusion is between wartime production and post-war manufacture or refurbishment, whose models remain very close. On American weapons, an assembly of parts from different suppliers and dates is the rule rather than the anomaly, arsenal overhaul having been systematic.