I have seen a very early carbine that was mostly complete with it's original parts. I have only seen a few examples where this does not apply. Refinishing the stocks and metal really depreciate the guns value and is generally frowned upon by serious collectors. If you go this route in restoring carbines you need to be able to spot original finish on the gun as well as the various parts and stocks. The value of your gun will also go up as it is a correct complete carbine.
This can be fun to do in locating correct parts and restoring your carbine to issue condition. You want to find guns that will only need a few parts to make it right. There are parts and stocks that can set you back hundreds of dollars to purchase. If you try to go with just a barreled action to restore, this can be a very expensive project. The most important thing in doing this is to find a carbine in it's original finish and barrel. Another way to go is to find nice clean shooter grade guns that may only need some correct coded parts to complete the gun back to original as issued condition. Most of the time these firearms are not messed with and are in the condition they were issued to the vet. One of the best ways to find unaltered carbines is to look for veteran's take home guns. There are many ways you can "go" with collecting the carbine. This would amount to roughly twenty six variations not including the Inland paratrooper models! One other way to go is to collect carbine accessories such as all the various magazines and pouches for example. One collector I know wants to have a sample of every variation of the carbines produced by Inland and Winchester. Another idea is to try to get samples of all the prime contractors. Maybe you want to collect only "I" stock carbines for example. By studying this book you can plan how you want to start your collection. When you are ready to look for collector grade carbines you cannot go wrong in investing in this book titled This is the most comprehensive guide book ever written on the M1 Carbine! The details covered in this book will answer any questions you may have on the carbines.
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or government release carbine or a gun like that works great for learning how to take a carbine apart, how it shoots and how the gun functions. Those carbines are generally of poor quality and just plain awful. If you are a beginning collector it is not a bad idea to start with a shooter grade carbine. With this in mind, you can see, there are not so many original condition M1 carbines left today. These rebuilt carbines then saw service in Korea, Viet Nam and many other hot spots in the decades after World War Two. The arsenals made no effort to reassemble the carbines using the correct codes for the reciever's maker. After the war many of the carbines in government inventory were overhauled and upgraded.
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Also by this time all the prime contractors were in full production. More were produced per month to replace losses. As the war progressed the survival rate of carbines got better. These early carbines had a terrible survival rate due to our war effort, combat losses, shipping losses due to sinkings and arsenal repairs and upgrades to name a few things that contribute to a early carbine's poor survival.
The first carbines to be produced came out in April of 1942 by Inland Division of General Motors. That seems to be quite a lot of carbines to deal with so why collect them? Well, first off, you must understand the statistics with these guns. You have to keep in mind that there was ten prime contractors who produced around six million carbines. The collecting of M1 carbines is getting to be a serious highly collectable field today.