Midway USA Importing A Large Batch Of WW2 Era M1 Carbines -The Firearm Blog

Midway USA recently announced that they’ve purchased a large lot of M1 Carbines, which is great news for people that are still looking to get their hands on a genuine World War 2 production model. Some of you may recall that last year, a batch from Ethiopia was in the importation process, however this lot, according to Midway USA is coming from Italy, with evidence that they were in the European Theater, and stored since the 1950s.

M1 Carbine @ TFB

Midway USA’s information follows:

After years of effort, our Supplier has been successful in securing a large lot of U.S. made M1 Carbines and MidwayUSA has purchased all of them! These M1 Carbines have not been arsenal refurbished.

UPDATE 5/19/2021 – While working through the grading process on the M1 Carbines, we now believe these issued carbines were turned back in to the U.S. Government for a functionality Check and Test. Our supplier believes this process would have been done in Europe and would have occurred prior to their transfer to the Italian Armed Forces. As part of the Check and Test process, parts may have been replaced or upgraded. Examples of replaced or upgraded parts could include stocks, bayonet lugs, sights, bolts, safeties or other small parts. In rare cases, barrels may have been replaced, but they appear consistent with wartime production and use. There is no evidence suggesting these guns have been refinished, just brought to a serviceable standard prior to their transfer.

This single lot of M1 Carbines includes guns from 9 manufacturers with serial number ranges indicating production years from 1942-1945. Conditions offered will be “Fine”, “Very Good to Fine”, “Good to Very Good” and “Fair to Good”. We used the NRA Firearm Condition Standards for guns of this era as our guide to grade these fantastic guns. Many different product numbers will be offered to indicate manufacturer, variant and condition.

Here is the list of the 9 manufacturers:

Winchester
Rock-Ola
National Postal Meter
Quality Hardware
Standard Products
Saginaw – Variants S.G and S’G’
Underwood – Variants B, S, T and W marked receivers
Inland
IBM

Midway USA explained that they’ve had quite a lot of interest (naturally), so they’re trying to grade the M1 Carbines at present, and will notify prospective customers once that process is done. If you’re hoping to snag an M1 Carbine from Midway USA’s batch, head over to their announcement page and sign up to get notified, which is how these guns will likely be claimed. There’s no word on pricing as of yet, or when exactly they’ll finish the grading process. You can visit Midway’s main page for all their products, or follow them on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.

What do you think of this latest batch of M1 Carbines from Midway USA? If any of you got one of the Ethiopian M1 Carbines, let us know how it turned out. Of the 6 million M1 Carbines produced during WW2, how many would you guess are still waiting to come home?

Midway USA Importing A Large Batch Of WW2 Era M1 Carbines

M1 Carbine @ TFB

Doug E