Yugo SKS with LOTS of trench art

[MxwllBkr]

 Got this one about 3 yrs ago............ found it on armslist 4 years ago. the seller was trying to trade it, and some other guns for a truck. I tried for months to trade or buy the rifle from him, Finally ended up trading a Ruger 22/45 lite for it. Great piece of history from the Bosnian war.
  It is a mismatched gun.... gas tube, piston, and mag match receiver, bolt and carrier are penciled and match each other..  I posted this one awhile ago on ummmm errrr the other forum, where it was deemed fake and done with a sharpie........ well before any one starts on the sharpie thing again........ NO SHARPIE WAS USED IN THE FAKING OF THIS TRENCH ART!!!!!  .      Seriously though it was done mostly with pen, am I 100% positive it's real? No because I was not the first person to it...... however I do lean more towards it being the real deal than otherwise......enjoy!


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[spongemonkey]

No offense or anything since I dont know a whole lot about the sks rifle so far but, I would tend to agree that it is a bubba and not true trench art.  In my opinion of trench art, you got taken!  This advice is free and worth what it cost you!

[Greasemonkey]

I got nothing....but the date... 7-17-95 was just smack in the middle of some hellish times in Bosinian history.. I stumbled that a while back researching some other stuffs.. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre

Trnovo is a town and municipality in the city of Istočno (East) Sarajevo, Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Herzegovina... just slight distance to the west from Srebrenica, where the above happened.

The Bojaha word on the right side...there is a town in Albania with that name near the coast... which I'm not sure..

Some of the graffiti could be bonafide or could of just as easily been done by an over zealous history buff looking for a buck.. only the one who did it knows for sure... But..the date and random city are legit, not just made up random smatterings of stuff. Thats the mysteries of milsurps..

[MxwllBkr]

If somebody did it to make a buck they failed miserably as I only have a $250 pistol into it........ ......think about the research needed to verify all the diff. Symbols, then the time it took to carve with a pen instead of a knife.......  but who knows like I said I can't say %100 it is real ...... but I think it is

[Greasemonkey]

Regardless if I think it's real or not What I find most interesting, is it points to a really messed up nasty time in our own recent history. Something that most people never knew, or if they did, they have forgotten that these atrocities did happen and that to this day, is still being investigated and people imprisoned for.

The scorpion drawing... The Scorpions...a paramilitary bunch involved in the Srebrenica Massacre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scorpions_(paramilitary)

[running-man]

The time and effort it would take to imitate trench art on a yugo is simply a non-starter on this one, especially since all the old GB tracking threads (before I discontinued them this year) showed that trench art added zero value and often shaved $50 to $100 off the price vs an otherwise unmolested specimen. I personally think it's 100% legit. Serbs had ball point pens in '95 last I heard.  .
Of course bubba could have done it, but usually bubba has a purpose in his mods, this one certainly wasn't going to make him rich, if anything not doing a stellar job devalues the gun a bit.

I've got a Sino-Banian type 56 stock remnant that has a nicely drawn in Adidas symbol on the side carved with a blue ink ball point pen.

[Loose}{Cannon]

I wonder how many babies heads it bashed in....  Oops, did I say that out loud?

Nice Muslim crescent. 

[spongemonkey]

Well see, I most likely am wrong in my opinion (which happens often  ), but yet I learned something here.  Not accustomed to seeing trench art like this.

[carls sks]

thanks for sharing Max. 

[Loose}{Cannon]

I can't help but wonder why it even has a Muslim crescent....

[Dillar Dog]

Looks more like a moon and lightning bolt than moon and star.

Maybe some mythological meaning.  Can't call it.

[Phosphorus32]

Muslim victims of Serbian murderers in this case.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/11/world/europe/11serbia.html

You can even find a video of 6 of the killings, taken by the perpetrators themselves, which I did not watch.
http://www.bosniafacts.info/video-holder/trnovo-execution-video-srebrenica

[Justin Hell]

I remember this gun....and I remember the member bashing at that other unhallowed waste of bandwidth.

[Greasemonkey]

I can't help but wonder why it even has a Muslim crescent....

Seems to contradict it's self religion wise.. has what I take is a Muslim crescent on the left side and the Serbian Orthodox cross on the right, which is a Christian religion/Christian sysmbol. Usually a person sides/associates with one or the other, and religion was kind of like language, pending the region one was from.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbian_cross

Also seems to contradict it's self language wise also, with an odd mix of latin and cyrillic writing... usually one or the other were used, not both, and not together, use of either language was usually dependant on the region.

People who share a religious belief and speak/write the same language will cluster together, wanting nothing to do with the other side. So to have both Muslim/Christian markings, and Latin/Cyrillic writing all done by one individual is really really odd........

.......... unless.... maybe it was carried and used by a bilingual psychotic Atheist. 

The stock alone seems to be in as much conflict as the whole country was during that time. 

[Justin Hell]

Maybe the Muslim was shot by his fellow compatriots and it was reissued?

[running-man]

Looks more like a moon and lightning bolt than moon and star.

Maybe some mythological meaning.  Can't call it.

I agree, I'm not seeing the Muslim connection with this one.  Everything else on it from the Serbian Cross to the language used to describe places is Serbian.  The moon is the only thing I see that might be considered "off"; old Herzegovina flags look remakably similar, though I see a lightning bolt and not a star too:


This one is a Bosnian revolt flag, used when the Bosnians were seeking autonomy from the Ottoman empire:


I also don't see any Cyrillic anywhere on this thing. 

Anyone notice the Mercedes Benz symbol on the right side under the bolt carrier handle?  Well either that or it's a flux capacitor.   

Nobody's going to be able to prove anything one way or another with respect to this gun I think, but it's a neat one for certain.  Definitely a conversation starter! 

[spongemonkey]

Anyone notice the Mercedes Benz symbol on the right side under the bolt carrier handle?  Well either that or it's a flux capacitor.   

Nobody's going to be able to prove anything one way or another with respect to this gun I think, but it's a neat one for certain.  Definitely a conversation starter! 

Uuuhhh, maybe it is just a "Peace" symbol?  And if so,  maybe your capacitor is all "blocked up" with flux?      

[running-man]

Naw, a peace symbol has four legs ☮, this one only has three. 

I wouldn't expect to see a peace symbol on the same gun that has 13 RIP tick marks though.   

[spongemonkey]

Naw, a peace symbol has four legs ☮, this one only has three. 

I wouldn't expect to see a peace symbol on the same gun that has 13 RIP tick marks though.   

You are correct, I missed the other leg being missing. 

[Greasemonkey]

Mercedes Benz symbol    little known fact.. the symbols 3 points represents the automaker’s drive toward universal motorization, having it's engines dominate the land, sea and air...or basic world domination..

geeze....I've been a mechanic too damn long..