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Back in January I ordered an AK receiver from NoDAK Spud and now that it's finally come in I'm thinking about putting an AK together. I'm not in a huge rush (the purchase was just a hedge in case the congress critters decided to ban them again) so I'm wondering if they prices on the kits have come back down again or if it would be better to wait a few months? I'm looking for a plain Jane fixed stock setup w/ a barrel.
parts kits are now in the $400-700 range if in good condition and original barrel. harder to find by the day. you missed the boat. i still have 4 unbuilt unissued kits. wish i had more.
Apex has Romanian kits for $325 and new Romanian barrels for $180. I think that's about as good as it gets at the moment unless you get lucky on Gunbroker.
Sounds like I should wait a while longer to see if prices will return to pre-Sandy Hook levels. When all of those panic-bought AKs start hitting the market I think parts kit prices will start dropping.
That's my theory anyhow.
I would recommend at least getting the barrel now. Cold hammer forged chrome lined commie barrels are not getting any easier to come by and they certainly won't be getting cheaper ever, due to the import barrel ban. Unless you don't mind using a US barrel, in that case disregard.
Honestly though, I don't believe kits will be getting any cheaper either. They seem to go up in price every year. I would not consider those to be panic prices. The days of cheap kits are gone, IMO.
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I see Egyptian non-matching kits for $200. You'll still need a receiver, barrel and some other small parts.
Kit prices aren't going to really come down. Kits with original barrels will only go up. There will be shipments from time to time that will come in, they may be at somewhat reasonable prices. Nothing is guaranteed though. The overseas dealers know what the situation is here and will try to get as much as they can for their stuff.
If you really don't care what you get, then you might be fine. Cole's has Egyptian kits for $199, which is a pretty good price.
Non-US barrels will be hard to find .. if that's important to you, I would pick one up as soon as one comes up. The Romanian factories have said that they aren't producing spare barrels. They are focused on building complete rifles for the short to intermediate term.
Like the Mosin's, the Russians and it's allies produced millions of AK-47's and AKM's, but like everything the Russians made it was all designed to be throw aways and I suspect many of these guns have been used up and destroyed by now. Plus add in that many are not going to take the time to recycle their guns and have them neatly cut up to ATF spec, so there will only be a certain limit to supply.
as a kit builder for 15 years now, here's how i remember it:
kit importation was spotty until the mid 90's. the advent of the internet (ca 2000) dramatically increased the marketability of kits thru sales exposure and the origin of kit building forums. kit importation went full tilt from 1999-2006. the ATF stopped approving form 6 importation documents for kits with barrels in 2006 in response to the increasing availability in regard to building kit guns without serialization (flat building AK, for example, as first detailed by your's truly as early as 2004 - boy did i get a lot of shit from ATF as a result of having done that). few form 6 have been authorized for kits of any kind, even without barrel, since. another contributive factor, the American dollar fell against other currencies 2008-9, and has not recovered well.
as a result what you are seeing now is the end of commercially available kits. secondary sellers will be your only source in the future, unless the ATF gets new instructions and the dollar recovers.
complicating this question are the recent UN initiatives to reduce traffic in small arms that are being pushed by third world despots who are afraid of losing their power in exactly the way in which they took it (a plane load of AK-47 and RPGs). thanks to such initiatives your tax dollars are being used to buy up shipping containers of serviceable small arms for smelting by the ton.
in 2000 a connex shipping container of AK-47 cost about $22 per unit to an importer. holding them in bonded warehouse and paying a contractor to chop them in bond added another 2=4$ per unit. the UN is now paying nearly as much to throw them into east european foundry furnaces (yeah, sure, we know where they are really going, back into syria).
my thoughts? buy anything you see at reasonable pricing, especially the odd ones that everybody says can't be built, and be patient. also consider hodge podging US police demils. tube guns like tec-9 are sometimes demilled and sold on gunbroker and can be the basis for really cool subgun-like builds.
http://www.weaponeer.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=7550
http://www.weaponeer.net/forum/uploa...semi_suomi.JPG