In recent years, the question floating around forums and articles about military surplus was, “Is the era over?” It’s true that the firearm world is in the twilight stages of military-surplus importing. There are no bargain barrels of M1903 Springfields or 98k Mausers anymore. The back pages of popular gun magazines aren’t littered with two-for-one deals on SKS rifles or Lee-Enfields. The question that remains, though, is this: How much light is left? Thanks to a recent find in Ethiopia by Royal Tiger Imports, it’s clear that we can still see at least a sliver of the sun.
The find is the result of years of work on the part of Uli Weigand, who spoke with American Rifleman Editor-in-Chief Mark Keefe about the magnificent discovery in this article. As a short recap, though, Weigand managed to get his hands on storehouses that held many of the military arms purchased by or given to the Ethiopian government from the late 19th century through the long reign of Emperor Haile Selassie and past the Communist takeover of the 1970s. The find encompassed tens of thousands of firearms, running the gamut from Italian rifles captured from invading forces, Belgian rifles with the imperial seal to post-WWII exports given to the Ethiopians as aid during the early decades of the Cold War.
American Rifleman publicized this discovery in our magazine, highlighting several of the guns plucked from the stash. Among the group were several FN Mausers, a Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk I* and an Underwood M1 Carbine, which are all representative of many of the guns uncovered in those rural Ethiopian warehouses. The M1 Carbine stood out as a particularly nice example, and M1 Carbines are one of the most difficult military-surplus guns to bring back from overseas caches, thanks to a litany of legal and political hurdles.
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