"dou 45" marked K98?

[Dierk Gebhardt]

Where was it made? Would it be considered a rare K98?
Danke

[leondes]

dou stands for Waffen Werke Brunn AG, Bystrica, a German occupied plant in Czechoslovakia. Not easy to find but I wouldn't consider it rare.

Regards, Leon

[Dierk Gebhardt]

Were those built to the same quality as German factories?

[leondes]

German Heer inspectors were in the plant to assure that the same standards were met that were required in all the K98k plants.

Regards, Leon

[Mike Steves]

It's a matter of opinion on quality, but we have a document in our book on "first shot reports" from the factories in June 1944. Both dou and dot (the Czechoslovak factories" reported, and the dot factory had better first shot results (35.8%) than Mauser Oberndorf (34.2%), meaning more rifles passed the accuracy test on the first shot. Dou reported 33.4%, pretty close to Mauser. Actually, they were all pretty much on par (Steyr sucked, at 21.6% but look at the horrible quality of Steyr rifles in 44).

By the way, make sure your dou45 is wartime and not postwar, the value is significantly different for postwar and wartime production.

[AndyB]

dou was a Waffenwerke Bruenn plant, certainly not occupied by germans as located in Slovakia state 1939-45, the location is Povazska Bystrica. There are about 20 ie Bystricas in Slovakia.