What the demand is for 308 carbines IMHO if you reload just load a 30-06 to 308 velocity and pay less. There's no difference is action length. My 30-06 load is about the same as 308 for both of my rifles and it kills just fine.
Dave, I agree with you on all counts, and even if you aren't a reloader reduced loads are manufactured for the 30-06.
I think the current demand, and the prices are due to the rarity of them. Back in the 60's-70's gunwriters of the day had consumers chasing velocity, hence carbines were not that much in demand, everyone wanted a 22 inch barrel on those pumps. The few that went against the grain tended to buy a carbine in 30-06, probably because it handled heavier bullets better according to gunwriters of the day. I know when I bought my 30-06 carbine in 1979 my LGS didn't have any in stock, all the 22 inch barrels you wanted but no carbines so they had to order mine.
Now fast forward to the present. I think because of what I stated above, there are not to many carbines out there in the used market in .308 and obviously they aren't making them anymore. I looked for YEARS, not because I needed one, but because I wanted one and they are extremely hard to find. If you look hard enough you can find them in 30-06 but .308 carbines are rare birds. So I got to the point that I didn't care what it cost, I just wanted one. A local LGS owner had one(his personal gun) and I bugged him for years, he didn't want to sell, so this year I just kept upping the offer $100 at a time untill he went for it.
I felt I overpaid for it but I didn't care. Then in light of the fact that I saw 2 sell on Gunbroker recently for $1600 and $1800 I realized I did well on the purchase. Additionally the one bbassi mentioned in his post above sold yesterday for $1876.
Now the only Carbine I want is a 760 in .35 Remington, but that one will be real tough if not impossible as they only produced it from 1964 to 1967 and again in 1979 and in that 5 year period only made 454 of them according to records I had gotten from Remington. I'm sure if one came up on Gunbroker it would top out at over 5 grand.
