Looking for information on this rifle

handguard ring cut off as well , between the bolt mod ,absence of HG ring , not certain receiver port is original , and scrubbed markings including what caliber i would keep walking , its not restorable if that was your end game , and as a shooter there are many better options

not to say unknowns can not pan out , but this puppy is done

i was in a hole in the wall LGS one day about 10 or15 years ago,long enough ago i cant remember , there was this horrible condition mauser pattern rifle on the "bargain rack" , it had a very odd crest i had not seen , fella tried to tell me it was a Swede , i knew that was not right but didnt reply , i asked how much he said $150 , i scoffed , it was in bad condition , real bad ,real bad pitting , sighted the bore there was a 3 inch portion of the bore eroded away, just gone , so i went to work using his berries as a speed bag on the price

ended up $50 out the door , figured at worst the unknown would clean up for a wall hanger in the gunroom. i get home and immediately start researching , took about 2 weeks to hit pay dirt , i scoured pics and history on every country that used mausers , i kept coming back to turks and yes swedes because of they both share the same barrel band mechs ,the long flat 1/2 inch wide springs underneath on the forearm, but nothing

did a search and decided to go deep in the pages of the search results , really had no other place to go , on about page 8 (again memory) there was a article on Turkish mausers and the massive undertaking of all their rifles refit conversion to the new 8mm mauser at ANKARA , the article went on to explain they scrubbed from the rifles all the old Ottoman Empire markings , and lo and behold was a picture of the crest that was on my rifle , the Ottoman "Tughra" crest

keep in mind the trigger guard screws were so rusty i could not get them to budge to look for markings below the wood , later i was able to get them to break free and a abundance of markings were discovered , all of which would have narrowed the search had i not found that article , it did have very ornate scribe on the receiver rail which kept me coming back to Turk as well

so what i had was a Turkish Mauser that managed to escape the great rearsenal of the entire turkish armory of mausers by more than likely finding its way to the states prior to the refit at ANKARA commenced , the article went on to say , the only known examples were in museums and in the states there were only 6 known examples that were in private collections

so now i knew it was rarer than hens teeth , so i cleaned it up as best i could with out disturbing the rifle , as it was unaltered other than condition , i breathed life into the stock with some very good furniture conditioner aimed at antiques , and it actually presented , "OK"

now the decision to keep or not , answer was simple , throw it on GB , list it for a 3 week auction to ensure the most could see it , i put $500 on it thinking it was too high , at the time you could buy a Chicom AK for that , and thought if it doesnt sell i would creep the price down

a week to go i had 40 watchers , the description i wrote was about 20 lines long and i included no less than 20 pics , 2 days to go i think i had almost 60 watchers but still no bid , one day to go , came the bid , second bid was near the end and came about an hour before end of auction but jumped up to $700 , first bidder must have inputted a max bid , he was still high bidder , then the next bids came in under the 15 minute rule and the last bid was just under 2k at $1900 and change , if anything i over sold the poor condition and it did not matter , my chicom AK collection got thick that month , the first bidder walked away with it if memory serves and the FB he reported was he was elated , as was i , for $50 i went on a sending spree for my collection