The Good 'Ol Days!

[m14brian]

I'm posting this up for RDS.

I wish I'd bought 100 of these at this price back then!
m14brian

[RDS]

Thanks Brian
Ad came from the Feb. 1959 issue of American Rifleman. Note ad mentions they are "not Korean War reworks or welded together monstrosities" but the "real deal" This is one of the earliest ads I have come across referring to welded M1 Garands.

[m14brian]

You are welcome Sir!
I think the ad is really cool, especially being from 1959. Don't see that kind of stuff every day, thank you for bringing it to the forum for us to see!
m14brian

[RDS]

Ye Old Hunter/ Hunters Lodge were part of Sam Cummings Interarms. Sam was a former CIA employee who did weapons deals for the CIA in the early days of the CIA. He left the agency to form Interarms at age 26. Their was much speculation that Interarms and Sam were doing the bidding for the CIA. He did this by purchasing the military surplus weapons from countries the CIA was rearming with modern post war weapons. Interarms closed down in the 1990s after Sam passed away. He died an extremely wealthy man.

[MRusan]

Back then, $80 was real money.

[RDS]

Back then, $80 was real money.

$714.10 in todays dollars. Average manufacturing wage was $2.22 per hour in 1959. My father in 1958 was an electrician for Celanese Corp. He earned $2.50 per hour plus a small shift differential. He was a union member and said that was good money back then. Min. wage I believe was a dollar an hour in 1959.

[Earl]

I nearly want to cry when I find my old issues of Shotgun News from the late 90’s and early 00’s. This is cool. If I could go back in time with $1000

you could find all kinds of rock bottom surplus deals back then. I suppose the former Soviet arsenals weren’t bottomless after all. Although I did read an article a while back that said they were going to melt down a bunch of old German guns to make the steel for a church they were building and the pictures still showed crates of 98k’s, Lugers and MG42’s.