A few weeks ago, a Redditor named Mark happened across a Remington M1903 “03-A3” sniper rifle at a yard sale.  He snatched it up without being sure of what he had, but it turns out his gut was right.  Mark provided more photos of his new-to-him Remington M1903-A3.  Given the many faked surplus rifles out there, Mark’s example would be hard to fake as you can see from the photos below.  The following is from Mark’s initial post on Reddit.

This is my parts matching 03a4 that I found at a yard sale. Cartouches are crisp and relatively clean gun. The scope is a repro m82 as the original owner lost it years ago. He bought this gun from DCM back in the day and it sat in his closet for 30-40 years.

From my limited understanding of these only 28k where ever made during the course of world war 2 until they switched over to the m1c and stopped production. This is the first official from the ground up sniper rifle ever built by the United States.

*the whole gun is original including the barrel however it did go into re-arsenal after the war. The only non original part appears to be a single barrel band when it went through re-arsenal.

Other than the rifle scope being a reproduction, everything else appears to be in order to be an actual M1903 A4.  For those wondering how an “03-A3” (as seen on the receiver above) could be an M1903A4, an excerpt from the American Rifleman magazine explains that despite the factory markings, about 28,000 were destined to become A4’s and were officially taken in as such by the United States.

Interestingly, the “’03-A3” nomenclature remained on the receiver ring of the new M1903A4 sniper rifle although this marking was applied to the extreme left of the receiver ring and the serial number stamped on the extreme right side which permitted both markings to be plainly visible with the Redfield mount in place.

The M1903’s seller’s explaination of the original scope being lost is curious.  However, Numrich’s reproduction M82 rifle scopes had high praise on the CMP (Civilian Marksmanship Program) forum.  Reproduction scopes seem to have ranged from around $400 to $500.  Mark snagged the whole M1903A3 sniper rifle for $500!  You can check out other great deals TFB has reported on HERE.

What do you think about Mark’s yard sale find?  For M1903 experts, are there any other tell tale signs to show that it’s an original or a fake?  Given that authentic M1903 sniper rifles go for thousands of dollars, what would you guess this one is worth since the original scope was replaced by a reproduction?