I’ve bought/sold them for between $50-$125 a box.
I would be very interested to see one of these rounds fired from a test gun. Especially by someone like you who has the proper equipment to do it safely & gain useful information from it.
Thanks for the info, I will definetly keep my eyes peeled for some. If you do come across a box, or even a few rounds, please let me know. If you ever come across any other interesting ammo, I am always looking for samples to test. I've got about 200 rounds of Misc ammo I am going to be shooting hopefully this month, just for bench marking. Turk, Romanian, 30's FN, 30's German, Greek, etc. I usually try to put 10-15 rounds through to get a good sample.
Point being, if you don't know what they are, and you shoot them through your gun thinking its just regular ammo, you run the risk of grenading it.
I have heard from other collectors, back in the day when distributors had pallets and pallets of this surplus German ammo you ordered a battle pack, or a crate, they just sent it out, they didn't know what it was (or care). Jim Haak got all sorts of different stuff back in the day at random, including crates of the tungsten cored hartkern stuff...to the distributors, it was all just German surplus ammo...
I wouldn't want to see an average joe running a box of pressure test ammo through their gun for giggles...
From my experience I wouldn't worry too much about someone shooting these rounds. Would I advise it, absolutely not, but it is well within the safe operating range of the Mauser 98. 4500 kg/cm2 is about 64000 psi, which is about or less than what a lot of modern magnum cartridges are loaded to. (65k-70k psi)
I have been amazed what a 98 action will stand up to. One of my previous test samples was a 243/1939 that was damaged, but in original condition, that came to me as a stripped receiver. We tested a wide range of loads that started at 60k psi and worked up to 111,000 psi. Around 83k psi, headspace increases a minor amount. 99860 psi did no structural damage to the action, but it did increase the headspace about .005 and we had to beat the bolt open. The 111,000psi (estimated through software) required taking apart the action. Interesting side note, most people do not know or understand, the barrel stretches as much or more than the lugs setback. We found that a lot of out of headspace rifles are due to chamber stretch.
I meant to ask if anyone knew how these rounds were marked or if anyone has a picture of them?
I've spent a lot of time researching mauser heat treatment and metallurgy, and through my research have shot a lot of different ammo through several test rifles. One issue I have had, from a scientific standpoint (I am NO scientist) is calibrating the test equipment. You can see wildly different pressures through different barrels. While this ammo can't be scientifically "trusted" to be correct and exact, it would be extremely interesting to shoot a known calibrated pressure round to see how close my calibration matches.
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