Some Bulgarian factory inert rounds

#1

At the UK ECRA meeting a few weeks ago a collector I know bought a job lot of around 10 of each of these rounds. In exchange for me doing some work on some artillery cases for him, he said I could have one of each type of round for free. Here they are:

All of these have unstruck primer caps with no primer compound. Except where stated, all have brass primer cups with no annulus. I have pulled a few of them, if you shine a light into the case you can see the the cup is empty.

They are: (From left to right):

7.62 x 54R Ball, CWS Case, Hole in case, Headstamp: 10 97. Nickeled brass primer cup with red annulus.

7.62 x 54R Ball, CWS Case, Headstamp 10 91

7.62 x 54R Tracer, CWS Case, Headstamp 10 91

7.62 x 54R Blank, CWS Case, Headstamp 10 91

7.62 x 39 Ball, CWS Case, hole in case, Headstamp 10 97. Nickeled brass primer cup with red annulus.

7.62 x 39 Blank, CWS Case, Headstamp 10 89

7.62 x 38 Ball, Green Lacquered Case, Headstamp 10 93

7.62 x 39 Tracer, Green Lacquered Case, Headstamp 10 93

5.45 x 39 Ball, Green Lacquered Case, Headstamp 10 93

5.45 x 39 Plastic Bulleted Blank, Green Lacquered Case, Headstamp 10 93

9 x 18 Makarov Ball, CWS Case, Headstamp 10 93

#2

For anyone interested in these, there is a problem that I should have thought of before posting.

Most of these have no holes in the cases and the primers are unstruck. Therefore they look like live rounds. This means that shipping them would be a problem as there is no way to show that they are inert.

They could be pulled, but I think that this would destroy the cartridge as a collectable and make it no different from an inerted ball round.

They are also very difficult to pull. I pulled one of the 7.62x39s and it took around 100 hits of the puller against concrete to remove the bullet.

#3

John Munnery sold these steel case types for several years assembled for him in just this way. There are still plenty of them awash in the USA.

#4

You will find that the tracer rounds contain live tracer compound…

AKMS

#5

We try not to know that.

#6

And you can drill a case?

#7

Yes I can drill the cases if you are alright with the rounds having holes in them.

Am I correct that you want two of each type of the 7.62x39s and one of each type of 5.45?

Even if they do have holes in, they would still look like intact rounds on X-Ray, so could possibly be siezed by customs anyway.