Thinking of getting a Garand.

I am not looking for a high premium collector.

What do I look for in a shooter that will be attractive when I go to sell it

I plan on physically inspect at local gun shops and gun shows before I purchase

What are the usual problems

What is a cut OP

How much wear at the muzzle end of bore is okay

What should I expect to pay

The two above may not be that far apart in price.

Shooter grade Garand - probably going to start around $600 and up. The problem is you may get a $400 clunker that somebody wants $6-800 for. There are many details with these rifles, and opinions, that make a quick answer pretty hard to do.

Start with the CMP grading page for their Garands:

http://thecmp.org/cmp_sales/rifle_sales/m1-garand/

This is a pretty good idea of what the muzzle and throat erosion readings will equate to in assigning a "grade" for the rifle. If you can get the muzzle and throat gauges, you can take your own readings. Most sellers will let you take the readings, or they will help you with their gauges.

The CMP has suspended Garand sales to catch up with a back-log of orders, not sure when, or if they will start selling again. I was in their warehouse last June, they had about 300K in crated Garands to go through. If you can wait, the purchase there is a fairly accurate idea of what you will be receiving.

CMP rifles tend to do better on resale, as they a have a known origin. Yes, they are a parts rifle of rebuild parts, but they have a bit of pedigree with the CMP certificates.

Spend some time on the CMP Forums, they are pretty good about sharing information and answering questions.

Go to the CMP forum and you will get a better handle on price and condition. Occasionally a person will sell out a collection and they want a "fair" price and not a "gun show" price. But, you have to be fast and have a basic knowledge of the value.

kwg

And there may still be rewelds floating around.

Best Battle rifle this country ever issued to the GI's

Outside what the CMP sells, I haven't seen an M1 for sale under $700 in the last ten years. I'd say you can expect to pay minimum $700 for a shooter grade with a halfway worn out barrel, beat up stock, mix-master parts and $1000-1500 plus for a one that has all the correct parts, cartouched stock, good barrel, etc. You might get lucky and beat that, too. Nothing wrong with mix master for a shooter. That's how they were done when the rifles were in service. The depots made little effort to match part origin in the rifles during rebuild unless it was for a special purpose.

CMP has announced that unless they get more rifles from some source they are currently unaware of, they will run out in mid to late 2017. Figure prices will automatically go up as soon as that happens.

Chances are, a mixmaster is more authentic than a matching parts gun.

Arsenal/depot rebuilds are part of the history!

Spend the money an buy a NM rifle, you'll never be sorry.

Mine will shoot tuned handloads into 1 MOA out to 400 yards (as far as I've shot it). Old blind man needs scope.

Just because it has some NM parts on it, doesn't mean it'll shoot well.

2 of my rack grade guns, with bedding added will shoot moa or just under to 600 with reloads....

If its a true NM gun, new barrel etc... bedded and tuned and so on, it'll shoot well very likely, but thats probably 2500 these days...

Around here if a Garand will go bang it will most likely be $800 minimum... WW2 correct $2000 min. Some of the rarer WW2 stocks are bring $400-$600 dings and all.

The cut OP you asked about is the op rod... the earlier ones had a square inside corner that would sometimes develop a crack so to prevent that a lot of them were reworked with a small radius ground there as all the newer ones had.

If you don't mind waiting and taking a chance that they'll ever again have much to pick from then a trip to one of the CMP stores to hand pick your rifle is a good way to go but recently on one of the CMP forums someone posted that they only had 30-40,000 left and being in crates don't know what condition... may be a bunch of drill rifles and again it could be like the Greek return CMP specials with near mint original metal. So watch the forums for info on what's in the stores.

Other than that you can search locally but if you don't know much about them it'll be a crap shoot or watch the CMP forums (there are Garands for sale regularly) and the sellers there for the most part should be able to give you an idea of how close to being correct it is as well as muzzle and throat readings possibly.

The Garand is a fine rifle for Varmints to elk...

I bought mine for $168.
back in 1986.
I think they go for $850.
locally. Best buy in town.
I won a rifle match with mine.
I was as suprised as anyone.
whelennut

I have an all correct H•R. It is a lot of fun to shoot. I love the ping noise.

Shrapnel, do you use one particular load in your M 1 for everything?

I do. I use IMR 4895 powder. You want a faster powder than normal with the Garand, as 4350 is slow enough to put too much port pressure at the muzzle that can damage the operating rod.

I also use the Remington 150 grain Cor-lokt bullet and the load shoots enough like the ball ammo, I don't have to change sights to shoot ball ammo...

If you don't mind sharing, at what powder weight??


kwg

48 grains. Anyone that can't kill an elk with a Remington 150 Cor-Lokt, probably couldn't do it with partition either...

I use 45 grains oh H 4895 with a Sierra 150 grain GameKing.

that is partially correct on the op rods, originals were square in the joint. launching rifle gernades put pressure there, and they started cutting the square op rods with a semicircular cut, the new rods had a different size circular cut. Translated a uncut op rod of the right vintage can bring some pretty good bucks these days. The other change was on the gas piston screw.

i saw a couple of really slucky mismash garands in cabellas last fall, at about 2k a piece. they may have been dreaming.a lot of the current garands in recent years are coming home from other parts such as greece, etc. Then there are the danish guns with the VAR barrels which are really good shooters.
If you didn't really want the historical aspects etc per se, cmp was selling new build on a real garand reciever i think for about 1100 or so. but new wood, new barrel, new park, and everything working right.