CMP: South Store Sadness

[FALPhil]

I headed over to Anniston yesterday to pick up a couple more Garands before the price jump. The racks were almose bare. I describe it in detail in my blog.

While I was there, I met an old timer who had actually carried a Garand in WWII. He was from Dallas. He had found a barreled receiver with bolt in the six-digit range. He had all the parts at home to make it correct.

I had not been to Anniston store for a couple of years. The last time, it was bustling with activity. Now, it is more like a wake. Sad indeed.

 

[Faulkner]

I wonder if that could be because so many people have been purchasing rifles lately? I was in my local gun store last week and his shelves were just about bare of used guns. He said he's selling them as soon as they come in the door.

 

[NWPilgrim]

The only good thing about that is that it implies Garands are going out the door faster than they can un-crate and inspect the warehoused ones. More Garands in more homes is good. Fewer Garands to choose from is not so good.

Living on the West coast it is not convenient to go to either CMP store. My first two Garands were bought mailorder. But back in 2010 I was visiting my son-in-law in Illinois and on the spur of the moment we decided to do a road trip to camp Perry to pick out Garands from the rack. While the racks were getting picked over pretty well there were still a couple of nice service grades we picked out. It was a lot of fun to see all those Garands, parts, and meet the CMP folks. Well worth a 24 hr road trip!

Does CMP ever post how many crates or rifles are in storage yet to be inspected? Or are they still getting them in and it is always in flux?

 

[FALPhil]

Well the Garand arrived yesterday, and I got around to taking pictures today.

They don't let you break down the rifles in the store, so when it arrived, I broke it down and started examining the parts. Dang! This thing is a 5.6 million and all the parts (except for the stock) are correct for the rifle! So, essentially, I got a Correct Grade minus the stock. As an added bonus, the muzzle and the chamber both gauge at 1. The stock that is on the rifle is the DuPage with the CMP cartouche. It got me to thinking, what would it take to track down a decent mid-production H&R stock?

Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here are the snapshots I took today.
Receiver
Reciever Top
Muzzle
Right Side
Left Side

 

[Ignition Override]

Last Saturday was my first visit to the CMP. A friend who retired from the Navy Rifle Team told me that a few months ago, a contact had seen no Service Grades at Anniston. When I walked in there were still no S. Grades, except those already ordered to be shipped.

The two Field Grades were pretty worn, but they had about eight Service Grade Specials. My only goal was to select my own M-1,
so I bought a Special, but only because with the growing number of factors influencing demand, there might not be a chance to see Service Grades on the rack, in person, for quite a while.

The staff told me (Aug. 31) that "We are 5,000 M-1s behind, because of ammo orders". The CMP is exempt from the recent Pres. Exec. Order, but do most gun people realize/believe it?
We still have previous demand for M-1s, the new anti-2nd Amendment ATF "Kommissar", Hillary's serious chance to be Queen in the White House, a future gun panic can never be excluded, etc. There might be meager supplies of loaned M-1s in foreign countries, to be returned to our DOD.
There are probably very few left overseas and in Latin America which were Loaned by the US.