Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles 6.5 Mannlicher Schoenauer

Just curious. What is a nice / unaltered 6.5 x54 1908 ( 1903?) full stock carbine/ full stock Mannlicher fetching these days?

If it's in unfired condition it will bring about $3000-$3400
In "very good" it will bring about $1800, assuming a shiny bore.
Good with some "frost" in the bore, probably about $1000.
Average condition with rough bore $500-600.
50% wood finish with obvious rust and bad bore, about $300.

Add about 20-25% around here.

They were very expensive when new (at least by the time they made it to America), and remain so today.

I saw an MS in 257 Roberts a couple of years ago at a gun show, man that was a beautiful rifle.

For around here gnoahh's figure is more accurate.

My 1903 will feed with 140 gr. spritzers if only one or two are loaded in the magazine. More than that and the nose rolls out of the front of the mag. 160 gr. RN's are seemingly fail proof and that's fine with me. I much prefer the longer, heavier bullet. My 1908 feeds 200 gr. cast bullets slick as a whistle from a full mag. The same cannot be said of some of my Mausers and cast bullets. The cartridge from the right side of the stagger in the box mag. always feeds fine but not the left....and I haven't looked into rectifying the condition.

Regarding those old German scopes....they must be pretty good because a fella sure sees a lot of them still in use and clear as a bell. They certainly look better mounted on an old Mannlicher or Mauser than a new scope.

I want one!

Fine examples gentlemen!

Here's a closeup. The wood is immaculate. Incredible for a sixty year old rifle. I lucked out.

Nice, Jorge....what caliber?

I've read, but don't know personally, that the magazine rotors are designed to fit factory ammo very closely, and often won't feed anything else.

If you have access to past issues of Rifle and Handloader, you can search the annual index of articles for the pieces on these by Wieland, and some guy named (if you can believe it) Barsness. Rifle 295 has an article about post-war models.

257 Roberts

For the 6.5 1903 seat any bullet to 3.03" or a touch more and your single round will feed like butter.Doesn't matter what bullet.

A friend is passing along some starter brass and loaner dies this weekend. I'll order a supply of such next week but I'll have something to play with until it arrives. Thanks for all the tips. I have a habit of sticking with the traditional route with the older rifles I obtain, so will likely use the batch of 160 RNs I have left over from playing with two different Swedes. There are 5 or 6 other 6.5mm bullets in my stash and I'll probably be tempted to play with some of them as well. I think it's gonna be fun....

I guess while we're sharing..this one came from Pappy after he passed so I don't know everything about it. The spitzer bullets in the third picture are accubonds that he had loaded up. I shot a few of them at first but kept rest whole. They fed fine and held about 1.5 moa. I did buy a box of loaded 140s at a gunshow that fed, but did not shoot well.

My loads are the Hornadys. They feed well crimped at the cannelure. Have not killed anything with them yet but an old Norma 156 worked well on an 8 point a few years back.

From what I can tell this one was a greek military rifle that Pappy semi-sporterized. It handles very well even with the 24" barrel. It has run through my mind to someday finish the sporterization with a new stock, metal finish, and turning down of the step in the barrel where the old rear sight was, but it's easier to carry it around this way...

I believe one of the gun heads here on the fire has a factory MS in 358 WIN, no doubt a very rare rifle.

Yep. Still kicking myself for letting a hundred dollars keep me from owning one!

You're correct 117, it is a former Greek military which doesn't hurt a thing, the action is the same.

Here's mine, the one I made from the Breda action.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA by Steve Zihn, on Flickr
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA by Steve Zihn, on Flickr

These beauties just keep coming out of the woodwork. Jorge, I can't imagine a M-S being is any better shape than that one....it honestly looks factory fresh. Steve, that fine creation of yours is definitely a one of a kind. 117lbs, your military sporter ranks right up there, too.

Dang, these thangs are really starting to grow on me. Hope it doesn't turn into an affliction......

Met up with some friends yesterday, one of whom has a great deal of knowledge about German/Austrian firearms. He lived in Germany for many years and immersed himself in their hunting and firearms culture, so was able to share quite a bit of info on my new Steyr. The information he shared with me made me even more impressed with this M-S...if that was possible. My brass, dies, and bullets coming from Graf won't be here until next week, but he just happened to show up with a box of FN surplus FMJ ammo with a 1950 date on it. It had 15 rounds on stripper clips. None of them survived the meeting.

I had bore sighted the post reticle a few days ago and it was remarkably close. Shooting at an 8" plate at about 165 yds, we were able to walk the shots into it by aiming at the upper right side. After that, three different shooters rang the plate pretty much at will off a sand bag rest. I also tried a few shots with the scope removed. This was mostly for slaps and giggles since I can't see iron sights worth a schmidt any more, but I did manage to get the plate wet a little bit. Here is the plate we were shooting at....the small dot out in the water to the left of the point along the right shoreline:





The Norma box in the pic is new brass also brought to me by my friend. Wish it had been loaded ammo so we could have kept on popping caps!