My Swedish mauser is now 100 years old made in 1907 ! personally i think Swedish Mausers are the best rifle ever made, and the 6.5 x55 the best calibre ! ! i have owned it for 23 years of that ,i cant fault the quality of it ! Imagine a rifle made today[2007] ,made to the Best Standards of machineing ,steel quality ,workmanship and think how much it would cost ??? $10,000.00 ?

They definitely don't make them like they used too.

The Swedes are indeed very nice (I have two, oldest one being a 1906). As for the Swedes being the very best made Mausers can cause generate a lot of discussion as there will be those who will champion others such as 1909 Peruvians, '29 Persians, G33/40's, etc, etc. I have an early '91 Mauser that the metal work is simply a thing of beauty, ever bit as good as any Swede I've ever seen (not the design, just the quality of metal work).

Yup, it would cost a lot of money to build something like a 96 Mauser in the same manner today.

On the other hand, if somebody went back in time and showed them an M-4, H&K, or even an AK and said "do a lot of R&D, tool up, and build these by the millions" they would have been quite challenged as well.

I have a 96 Swede made in 1923 that is very nice. It was about unfired when I got it. It is close but not quite the match of my 95 Chilean made in 1895. The Chilean also appeared to be unfired when I got it.

Cool!

I've got 3 over the century mark now, 1903 and 1893 Turks, and the Gewehr 88 I got for Christmas is now 116.

Most peace time rifles and pistols made in that era are very well made and finnished, the sweades are very good as were rifles made in Germany and Austria, if you want to see a work of art check out the magazine spool on a Greek mannlicher, the people who made that knew how to build a rifle.

Damn, I envy you guys with rifles of an age older than a century. My oldest one is 1940, hardly impressive. But I must agree with you completely DarwinMauser. Peace time rifles are built to amazing quality standards. A good friend of mine has several Swedish mausers, and they look beautiful, I look at them like I do when an extremely attractive woman is standing near me. I have a couple of Swiss K31s, and of course, all of them were peace time. I find myself looking forward to disassembling them just so I can admire the workmanship of that mechanism.

I have a Carl Gustaf 96 that was built in 1899. And now, at 107 years old, it still looks damn near new .

Well we have to speak for the good old USA also....

I have an 1898 built Krag, manufactured by Springfield... it is every bit as quality built as my 1920 Swedish Mauser, my 1924 made CZ Mauser and my 1921 Rock Island made Springfield 03....

and my 1917 made Winchester Enfield, might not be a slick as the Krag, but that thing is built as tough as a Bulldozer!

The best-made (not design) rifles I have ever seen were for sale in the U.S. for as little as $10 in 1960-65 or so. They were the Argentine M91 Mausers, many of which were absolutely brand new when sold here as surplus.

And, yes, you could sometimes get a slight discount by buying a wooden case of 10 of them, as I did in 1962...