Tom shows us a WW2 German Mauser K98 Rifle with all of the accessories, including a grenade launcher, range finder/sight, muzzle cover, action cover, and even wooden bullets! Super rare collection / grouping from WWII - you never see rifles like this!

WW2 1940 German Mauser K98 Rifle with Grenade Launcher, Range Finder, and More!

K98 Mauser: One of the More Reliable Rifles

Hey, guys. Welcome to another walk-in Wednesday. This one is going to be about the K98 Carbine. You can see the full assembly as it came in. When it came in, I had to like figure out all these parts. I have them laid around here because it's quite an assembly. Let's take the rifle first. The rifle is very common. It's a K98 K for carbine ninety-eight; actually, the patent date was 1898, which means this was used pre-world war one all through World War 1 between the world war two and it was made by Mauser and went to countries all over the world because it was so effective, accurate and reliable. Phenomenal rifle.  Coming into world war two, It's a bolt action rifle which later was replaced by the G43, the K43and also the machine pistol MP 40. The United States was doing the same thing, though, because they had the 1903 Springfield if you know that one. That was a bolt action rifle that was used for world war one all the way through Vietnam. So, these rifles were very accurate, very reliable. This is not an exciting deal when it walks in the door other than the fact that it's in phenomenal condition. This one is dated 1940. It has a mouser code on it. The 42 is a mouser code that comes with an original sling, and it's just in phenomenal condition.

What to Look for with a K98, Round I

There's a couple of things to look for when you're looking at a K 98, by the way. One thing that lowers the value, about half of the ones we get have mismatched bolts. And that's because if you watch period photographs or newsreels, they'll show this. The troops are surrendering. They're throwing their canine K98 in the one big pile over here, throwing the bolt over here, and you'll actually see a mountain of canine and a mountain of bolts separated. And that way, they knew that it wouldn't accidentally discharge. But then after the war, some entrepreneurial gun broker guy came in and started putting these all together. He, of course, just grabbed a bolt and grabbed the rifle. They mail them off to the United States, and they sound pretty cheap, but the bolts are a mismatch. So, watch out for that. You want to make sure everything is numbered correctly. If you want a true collector value.

What to Look for with a K98, Round II

Secondly, if they came in after 1986, they were import marked. And that hurts the value because it's not original. The import marked often was right here. So, this one has no import mark. It's completely matching. And thirdly, it's what we call a Default cut. Default cut it just as the name would apply, imply the veterans would take action and throw it in their duffel bag. They would take the stock and try to throw that in their duffel bag. But it stuck out about that much. So, they would cut it right here. And take it home, and when they get back together, they glue it back together. Put the brace back on there. Nobody knows the difference. But when I figure that out, it's going to hurt the value a little bit. So, this one is a little more exciting than most and more valuable than most in that it's dated 1940. It's an early gun. It's got no duffel cut. It's got no import marks, and it matches completely.

K98 Mauser Accessories: Muzzle Cover

Now, let's dissect this a little bit more. The first accessory that this one has that I rarely see and I'm going to talk a lot about throwaways. This is a muzzle cover. And I also would consider it a throwaway. Here's why. It's pretty hard. It keeps the mud and dirt from getting in there. It's kind of hard to take off. Covers the muzzle push down. It's spring-loaded. Go over and off. So that's a pretty rare item. But as you know, with all that, every time you stop and take a water break and then, you know, you don't want to mess with this, putting this on and off if you're suddenly ambushed. And also, when we talk about the grenade launcher, you'll say you can't use the grenade launcher. So, this is a throwaway, but it actually adds a lot of value because there's no many still around.

K98 Mauser Accessories: Action Cover

Here's another throwaway item, a big throwaway item, in fact, I've never seen one before for the K 98. This is an action cover. It has the Waffen proofs, which just means it was inspected for the army found to be of decent quality. The action cover it took me a long time to get this on. So, it covers the action, keeps again, keeps the mud and the rain away. If you're on the Russian front, keeps the snow away, but it doesn't keep the Russians away because they'll nail you. So, it's fastened on. But it actually is a lot more difficult than it looks. Each what I had to do is move it up here, fasten it, pull it down, continue fastening it so you can imagine the soldiers going to war, putting this thing on, throw it away. It makes it very rare that actually, I'm told just the covers worth about a $1,000 to $1,500, which is astounding. But there are very few around because again, it was thrown away.

K98 Mauser Accessories: Grenade Launcher

Now for the important piece of this assembly. It comes with a grenade launcher. I've seen the grenade launchers before. And honestly, I didn't even know how they worked.

So, here's what I learned. So, the grenade launcher goes right on top. It opens up here. You can see how it fits over the muzzle and then you just lock it on down — got to turn it the right way, though. That's a grenade launcher, adds a lot of forward weight. Now, what I'm told when vets are interviewed and what I've seen on the Internet, there was one grenade guy per squad later on the war, there might be two, but generally, there only one because there's a lot of weight with this. And then there would be a box of the actual grenades. This is an original grenade. Again, very rare. Don't throw this away. We think this is inert, but we're not sure. Let's see if we can find out here. Okay, Just kidding, it is inert, and this is a primer on screws, and these were rifles. You can see the rifling. This is actually bakelite. I was surprised by that.

The original ones that had Bakelite with rifling, you put it in, and it twists. You can see how that twists. So, you fire the primer in here. This is an anti-personnel grenade. Meaning when it lands, it would explode outward and kill within a radius.

This, however, from what I've researched, this is anti-tank round. So, again, it's a rifle. It goes in here when it comes out. The charge is all funneled toward the front. So, when it hits the tank, the explosion goes inward as opposed to out. So that's an anti-tank round. This, I'm told, is a replica. I wouldn't know the difference other than it's nice and shiny anti-tank round. And now there's one other piece.

K98 Mauser Accessories: Grenade Launcher Sight and Demo (well sort of) 

Again, this is going to be a throwaway, because it takes a little time to get this attached. Before I put this on, you can see there's a bracket that will go around the chamber. There's a level here. I'm not sure how much I'd be able to check the level if the tanks are coming at me. And then there's a meter range, rangefinder. It goes up to 250 meters from what I'm told. In combat, troops said they usually use them for close up. In other words, you waited till the tank got pretty close to you because you didn't want to waste the round. The sling gets in the way a little bit. So, you want to move that out of the way. We're going to pop this on the top here, screw it. Okay. And then we tighten this down. And the range finder is on the rifle along with the grenade launcher. We can look through this site. We can line up on a tank, but we can also push this little button and it will move like this. So, let me just demonstrate how that would work. Let's say I'm going to set it at two hundred yards. I actually aim at the tank like this. The weird thing is, if I put it on my shoulder, I can barely see it. It's very awkward, but it gets the right angle to get the tank at 200 meters. You can see how awkward it is — aiming and firing.

K98 Mauser Accessories: Wooden Bullets

Now, this is the mystery that I solved. This assembly also came with these wooden bullets. Now, when I first got these, I thought, okay, these are training rounds, but I actually never heard of wooden bullets used as training rounds. So, this is an eight-millimeter round, which is correct for the K98. We've got a few of these, and I was also wondering how in the world do they ignite the grenade to shoot at the top? The answer is they use wooden bullets. So, they would put one round in, fire the wooden bullet, it would hit the primer. At the bottom, spring-loaded ignites it and it shoots. Amazing, isn't it? I never knew that. I never saw one of these before. I wonder how many of you have never seen one either.

K98 Mauser Kickback from the Grenade Launcher, Ouch!

Back to the rangefinder. And again, these are all original. They're all Waffen stamped, which means inspector proofed amazing, amazing devices. But I mentioned that this was a throwaway and here's why. Well, you know, first of all, to hook all this up and then you want to use your rifle. You know you want to use your rifle. So, this kind of gets in the way. And I'm wondering how many people actually aimed it and shot it like this.

And the reason being, this is one ounce a bullet is about a 1-ounce charge. This is a 1-pound charge.

So, imagine the kick of a bullet. This is quite a kick with a grenade in there. With the amount of charge, I can imagine it would bruise or dislocate your shoulder. You wouldn't want to shoot it more than once in this position. So, what they did is they shot it more like this. They would put it on the ground. They would set everything up, put the grenade down in there. Again, we hope this is there inert.

K98 Mauser Kickback from the Grenade Launcher not Practical

I would fire my wooden bullet and the grenade would take off. Now, there's only one guy in the unit that's really good at this. So, he probably practiced a lot. And when they interview soldiers, they basically said they didn't use this piece. So, that's why I believe you don't see very many of these. I don't think they were used very often. Again, probably more of a throwaway item, but they would tend to shoot their grenade launcher in this position.

K98 Mauser Rare Accessories: Bayonet, Cartridge Holders, Manual

Now, just a couple of other quick things that also came with this assembly again. What makes us so special is all the things that came with it. And you can see there is a lot of really rare items that were thrown away on the battlefield and therefore hardly ever encountered by collectors. This is the bayonet. Nothing really special. It fits on the end.

It's a common bayonet dated 1940, just like the rifle. But look at the bluing on that blade. It was hardly used at all, just like the rifle.Phenomenal condition. The leather is in beautiful condition. All original from 19940 also comes with these cartridges.

The cartridge holders are for your ammo tool. This is for the grenade launcher to loosen it, and then we have two manuals that came with the assembly. This is a manual from 1936. And this is a later wartime manual that also comes with this assembly.

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So, exciting stuff. And we've got a lot more coming in every day. So, you want to stay tuned, watch more videos, make sure you like and subscribe to our channel. Thanks for watching.