Romanian SKS Production Numbers

[Worm]

57,295 - That is what my serial collection adds up to.

I think we can scrap the wiki-estimated 500k all together.

The Romanians had a weird way of serialization, but seem to have gotten their act together pretty quick, with an oddball here and there.

I estimate (And granted i'm just worm-shmo) they maybe broke 70,000ish all together.

What you all think?

[Worm]

Can the overlapping prefix letters from one year to the next simply represent what the happened to be on at newyears day?

Where exactly did the Prefixes carry over?

The only one is the PS prefixes but they didnt exactly carry over.. they Skipped all over.

If they were strictly in 1957.. then I might question the legitimacy of the one 1959 PS that was supposedly found. I never saw a picture, just saw someones serial.

If it was a mess up, or a bit of a phib.. that leaves PS prefixes in 57, and while some are no date PS prefixes, that may make them the very first.

[Worm]

I stand corrected, the DE's seemed to have carried over.

DE16x - 1957
DE8xx - 1957
DE109x - 1957
DE1456 - 1957
DE151x - 1957

And then...

DE1792 - 1958
DE19xx - 1958
DE19xx - 1958
DE2079 - 1958
DE2942 - 1958
DE30xx - 1958
DE3697S - 1958
DE38xx - 1958
DE40xx - 1958
DE42xx - 1958
DE4841 - 1958

But then why carry this prefix over?

PS no dates must have been the very first, then they added 1957 to it. After that must have come the AA-1957's, and then the DE's which carried over to 1958. But wouldnt you figure they would have scrapped the DE's for 58'? Why not have started with the BC's and CD's?

[Worm]

Could it be possible they had to meet a quota for each prefix? Say maybe, 5500 or so for each? Maybe once they realized the DE's never made that quota in 57', they had to go and add more to it?

[Worm]

my best guess for the order:

PS No dates
PS 1957's
DE 1957's
Then they changed prefix system.
AA-1957's
AB-1958's
BC-1958's
CD-1958's
Continuation of DE's-1958's

and then on and on

[Loose}{Cannon]

Dude...  its ok to talk to youself, just dont start answering.   

[Greasemonkey]

Kinda need more info to drill it down even more. 

But, lets take the Worm's estimated 70k rifles, thats almost dead center between 50k and 150k rifles.

Using those numbers, lets do a hypothetical calculation
Figure 70k rifles made, how many lost through attrition, captured elsewhere, some possably sold on the grey/black market, rough estimated 25% lost or say 17,500 rifles down from the total production figure, leaving 52500 rifles remaining. Then lets realistically say 10% imported on low side, 40% imported on high side.(Exact number will never be told outside of the importer) So using those numbers, figure a low number of 5250 to high of 21000 rifles in the U.S.  Is there a warehouse with crates of these, did Romania becoming a Nato member have to hand over said surplus weapons? 

As I understand, Cugir is now a private owned factory, not a military factory, which is why they continue manufacturing combloc weapons, They are more or less commercial manufactured weapons or they build off parts kits.

[Worm]

Dude...  its ok to talk to youself, just dont start answering.   

Funny funny 

[Worm]

Kinda need more info to drill it down even more. 

But, lets take the Worm's estimated 70k rifles, thats almost dead center between 50k and 150k rifles.

Using those numbers, lets do a hypothetical calculation
Figure 70k rifles made, how many lost through attrition, captured elsewhere, some possably sold on the grey/black market, rough estimated 25% lost or say 17,500 rifles down from the total production figure, leaving 52500 rifles remaining. Then lets realistically say 10% imported on low side, 40% imported on high side.(Exact number will never be told outside of the importer) So using those numbers, figure a low number of 5250 to high of 21000 rifles in the U.S.  Is there a warehouse with crates of these, did Romania becoming a Nato member have to hand over said surplus weapons? 

As I understand, Cugir is now a private owned factory, not a military factory, which is why they continue manufacturing combloc weapons, They are more or less commercial manufactured weapons or they build off parts kits.

Well sure, there could be a lot missing.. But looking at how high the highest prefix ends at around 5,300ish.. We can estimate total number using that.

Say they ended each prefix at 5,500..

Being theres 14 different prefixes that gives us 77,000 rifles.

[Loose}{Cannon]

Leaving out all hypothetical stuff out...  what do we know??

#1) There are 14 letter prefix combos regardless as to what year or the order.

#2) Each prefix como starts at #001 and the highest recorded is RC5325


About the only information you can extrapolate from the above is that given a total each possibly reaching aprox 5500 rifles times 14 = 77,000

Best quesstaamate I see with the current information. If another prefix is discovered... add 5,500.  I do believe that with the amount of imported rifles, we should have a very good representation of all prefix combos with a small possibly of 1 -2.

[Loose}{Cannon]

      I see Worm took my texted advice.

[Greasemonkey]

Ok, Cugir manufactured the M44 Mosin from '53 to '55, used the same style serial method, but also had prefixes CP, DX, EF, RF, FS, GR, TV are some I've seen.

The estimated production numbers:
1953- 2,000 – 3,000
1954- 36,000
1955- 31,000
That is 70,000 rifles in 3 years.

[Loose}{Cannon]

I wouldn't think mosin production #s would dictate or mirror image the sks production #s.  All we have is what we have.  I think 77k +/- 20k

[running-man]

I think it's under 100k. Unless the shipments that made it to the US are from a very small, isolated storage depot, there should be way more prefixes that would have popped up!