I keep thinking that I should sell off some of the collection

I don’t understand what this means, but we are all here to talk you away from the edge!   

Fe... ma.... rooooooooooo....     

Quite the two weekend haul The last couple of gun shows here in eastern Washington had three categories of milsurps available: over-priced, common, and sporterized, with a few scoring the trifecta 

The M1917 sounds fascinating. I've never heard of that variant before.  The two German used pistols and holsters are both exceptional in their own way.

Nice!  How interesting that what's in that crate from the 80's pretty closely matches (ghost, six digit /26\, letter, and 7 mil) what has been imported from Albania in the 2010's.

Makes you wonder how many more gems are out there waiting for their owners to finally unload them after untold years squirreled away and them coursing through the market again!

I'm inclined to agree that a full-blown 'seminar' (probably not the best word choice) given the logistics and financial aspects, would be near impossible. Nevertheless, a gathering at a centrally located show of "enthusiasts" isn't out of the realm of practicality. Pulling together known, verified facts - from the various country-specific open source production records (setting aside the speculatives) could be a start.

Yes, it would be a hoot.. getting verifiable facts on paper would be the difficult part.

Simonov started with an idea; perhaps the trace clues on the development of the AK-47 and it's galaxy of production spin-offs could us point to what (I'd imagine) would be essentially the same, albeit several years later, sources for the SKS's records, fabricators and exporters. NORINCO, Interarms, CAI, and so on might/might be the first step towards peeling the onion.

Therein lies another issue..getting information from an importer or exporter. That information is kept, at best, under a close guarded, absolute need to know basis. Short of a court ordered subpoena, no normal person outside of the importer/exporter elite/BATFE would be privy to that information. Most of the dozen or more US importers that existed during the SKS importation heyday are since long gone......their records are locked away in an undisclosed massive dusty BATFE warehouse somewhere. And to add to it, one is looking for import records from 30-40 yrs ago, who is to say if they even exist or met a shredder or incinerator, the BATFE dictates how long we have to hold records, they say nothing about how long they have to hold their own records...
The docks where the containers come a shore, they might have recoded of the number of conex boxes hitting the shores....but, you will have to have some stroke or subpoena to get to the information....again.... if it still exists.

OK....... now someone will say, one could track down the former import owners and see what info, if any they still have, I did try to track down the owner of C&A/DIG importer in Va Beach, they imported alot of Chinese stuff, the owner passed away due to heart issues about 15ish years ago. Some of the no longer existent US importers were actually run by Chinese nationals, who's strings were pulled by China. Most have since returned to China, there some were convicted of firearms crimes, importing automatics and such, during that peak importation time. With the nations who exported, it's the same game... no one or at least no normal Joe Smo will get the exportation records from Norinco or PolyTech, that information, if it still exists is held by Chinese government, because in the end, that's who controls what leaves that nation.