I saw a 308 sako with bofor steel written on the right side of the barrel. The seller said it was a stoeger import but I didn't find the stamp. Didn't Stoeger import after Garcia?
The stock looked like a blonde tikka deluxe stock. There was some rust inside the barrel and looking through it it looked dirty. The blueing and and stock looked to be in good shape. How much would this gun be worth? And how could I check to make sure the barrel is still worth keeping?

Since none of the more knowledgeable posters have responded,I'll tell you what I think I know.If it has Bofors mark on barrel,doesn't have Firearms International on the barrel in front of the forearm then its a pre Garcia non FI import and a very fine rifle.I have a 1963 Sako FI import with no Bofors mark, so who knows. Should be worth 800 dollars or more depending on where you live and condition. Sako's are all good, they just took a quality and stock design dip under Garcia.The National Rifleman recently had an article on Sako lineage.
I dont have my copy available or I would look up the real Facts,mabe someone else will.I believe Stoegers also imported after Garcia period.As far as the barrel, about the only way is to clean it and have a look with a borescope or bright light.
Look carefully at the throat ahead of the chamber and the crown.Use a magnifier to look at the crown.
Hope I haven't confused you too much.
I stand to be corrected by those more knowledgeable.
Covey

[ 11-18-2003, 01:17: Message edited by: covey16 ]

I think it would be worthwhile to scrub that sucker silly to get the rust out. I've never seen a Sako that wasn't worth the effort, and the early ones imported by Stoeger were excellent rifles. I could be wrong here, but it seems Stoeger was the original importer and Garcia came along later. Someone else may have a better handle on this. Best wishes.

Cal - Montreal

my post was kind of muddy. I also believe Stoeger imported Sako before and after Garcia. Hell,Nokia owned them at one time.Yours appears to be a pre Garcia.
Covey

[ 11-18-2003, 00:40: Message edited by: covey16 ]

Thanks guys. I was wondering if I should get it or not. The action was still in good shape so if worse comes to worse I guess I could always rebarrel. Does anyone have a picture of a pre garcia deluxe model?

There are a few people who frequent this forum that are exquisitely knowledgable about the early SAKO products, unfortunately I am not one of them, even though I worked for Stoeger from '82 thru '88. It is my understanding that the family owned Stoeger Co imported SAKO prior to the Garcia Corp's 1970? thru 1974 era during the time the Stoeger retail/wholesale operation was located in Manhatten on Fifth Avenue just down the street from Abercrombie and Fitch and was part of that era of fine primarily european Hunting products that were offered to well heeled and discriminating sportmen from sometime in the 1920's, throughout the late 40's, 50's, 60's until sometime in the very late 60's when the decision was made by SAKO's Finnish ownership to switch to Garcia for the US distribution until about 1974. Sometime in the 70's the Stoeger retail operation or even earlier was closed and the distribution operation was moved to South Hackensack, New Jersey. Nokia's ownership involvment occurred I think about the time the decision to drop Garcia and the Stoeger family was bought out and a partnership agreement was formed by Nokia owned SAKO div with the Spanish family that owned Llama Firemarms to operate Stoeger. That partnership operated Stoeger with US management from sometime in the early to mid 70's to the late 80's or very early '90s. During that time Stoeger imported many European and later South American and even for a short time a line of South Korean firearms. The split in the Stoeger partnership in the 90's was after the joining of SAKO and Tikka corporately in Finland under Nokia's direction with the consolidation of some production in the Rihimakki plant and included all senior management in 1983 or 84 in Finland with Mattii Packalen as managing director and later apparantly caused Nokia to sell its Stoeger interest and sell the SAKO/Tikka operation to Beretta in 2001. My photo's taken during my plant tour of 1984 show the logo on the entrance tower at the Rihimaaki plant as SAKO/Tikka and I can remember being surprised to see it so soon after the announcement. The Llama distribution went to another distribution channel along with a previous Stoeger management team under George Sodini Sr who had been president of Stoeger for many years and had engineered the Nokia/Llama partnership but the SAKO/Tikka product line stayed with the downsized Stoeger operation until after the relocation to Wayne NJ along with the South American Gaucha Shotgun line of products and the Stoeger Publishing group. The South Korean Daewoo products were never successfully established in the United States to my knowledge and dropped shortly before I left in Nov of 1988 in the third management reorganization I went thru. I was offered several other firearms lines in the fall of 1988 but was burned out with the treatment by the last Stoeger management team and left the Industry.

Bofors Steel is/was a Swedish manufactured product reknowned for its strength and heat resistance and is/was highly prized by the US Navy for antiaircraft guns - think of all the old WWII war films of the pompom guns blasting forever at enemy fighters ...those were properly known as Bofors Guns. IMHO any SAKO with "Bofors" stamped on the barrel will be a pre Garcia or a carryover piece of inventory that was on hand during the change to Garcia and is a quality product to be valued.
Early Garcia SAKO's get a bad rap for a disparate difference in quality and the early stuff is a great bargain because it was built to the earlier standards of high quality. However in a short time the Garcia Corp was guilty of over selling the SAKO plant's hand finished level of excellence in production capacity and then demanding that various production shortcuts be made to reach the Garcia's sales forecasts...even though Garcia never sold as many rifles as they promised the factory...and then dumped the inventory and gutted the reputation of SAKO with the cheaper quality product and whored up the price structures to sell the junky product they demanded just as they have done with the original Ambassdeur fishing reels.
As I Repp'ed the Stoeger lines in the southwest for 6 years I saw many new and unsellable Garcia SAKO's still on dealers racks and heard the rightly justified complaints from store owners and retail customers regarding the poor quailty of the late production Garcia labled product. I've never seen a Garcia SAKO shoot absolutly horrible as I did when I was running a multi state distributor with some very surprising name brand but poor performing firearms lines, but certainly not on average with what the pre and post Garcia SAKO's were capable of. Most of the Garcia SAKO's I've seen also had a very poor quality laquer finish and frequently were never cured properly and still sticky to the touch some 10 or more years later. In my years with Stoeger I became responsible for selling a significant part of the world production of SAKO but I concentrated on the product that was produced from the 1979/80 time frame to the introduction of the initial runs of the fiberglass rifles and later the smaller redesigned lite weight rifles in 1988. I can tell you that those old bigger guns shoot well and why. I left the gun industry and all hunting and firearms activities from 1988 untill just a few years ago and no longer have any affiliation with Stoeger, SAKO or any other manufacturer...but I enjoyed my 6 years at Stoeger (and the previous 6 years at a regional distributor based in Dallas)and made many friends in Finland and here in the States. I hope this sheds a little light on the Stoeger aspect of the your SAKO.
Ron

[ 11-19-2003, 01:28: Message edited by: verhoositz ]

Verhoozits
Pretty danged good post for someone that doesn't know thatmuch.
Thanks for the history and inside look.
Covey

WOW. Thanks for all the information. I've found more information in that post than I have all day.
I did find out that the action isn't a Sako but actually a Tikka Deluxe Sporter. Still a nice rifle but not sure if it is worth $500 with rings.

[ 11-19-2003, 03:37: Message edited by: MikeL ]

No I doubt that it is worth $500 even in pristine condition but if the barrel is not too badly corroded it should be a good shooter. Ithaca imported Tikka's back in the 70's with an ugly assed stamped metal drop box magazine and some of them also had the cherrybomb shaped bolt handle Tikka was famous for. But they are good rifles even if they are a little strange looking. Tikka in those days was a strong competitor in the Alpine Shooting Events and other target shooting programs. I had a Tikka product manager ask me one time why I couldn't sell the model that was so popular that was used in the cross country skiing events...and never did understand my answer..."when the event is staged on waterski's I can sell bunch of 'em". Somebody finally explained that it did not snow in Dallas ...just look at all the palm trees on the TV show Dallas !!LOLOL!!! What a hoot. The Tikka guy thought everybody had enough snow for crosscountry work. I tried to tell him about the bigtime local bicycle race here in August from Dallas to Wichita Falls called the "Hotter 'N Hell 100" where people die sometimes from the way over 100* heat...hell in August its close to 100 at nite! The SouthFork movie set is not far from the house and I promise you we are 500 miles from the nearest outdoor palm trees in Corpus Christi.
Ron

A Tikka with a Bofors-marked barrel? Could be, but I've not heard of this before. What's the designation on the action?

To supplement what's been said about the Sako ownership and distribution: Don't confuse who owns Sako with who distributes Sako in the U.S., these may be two different things.

Starting in the 1950s and lasting until 1972, Firearms International of Washington D.C. was the Sako U.S. DISTRIBUTOR. F.I. also distributed FN Mauser and a number of other imports. It was not until the GCA of 1968 that the distributor had to be printed on the firearm, so most pre-1968 Sakos will show no distributor mark. There was also an obscure distributor during part of this period named Rymack, but I've never seen a Rymack-marked Sako.

I'm not sure if F.I. dissovled or why the change-over, but the Garcia Sporting Arms Corporation was formed as a subsidiary of Garcia in about 1972 for the express purpose of taking over the U.S. distribution of Sako and several other lines. GSAC also built a small manufacturing plant in Virginia (I believe) to manufacture handguns that could not be imported under the 1968 GCA. Garcia's marketers believed in volume and speced their new imports from Sako to have heavier stocks and barrels, making them more like American rifles. Many argue about quality, but I didn't really see much decline in quality, although I much prefer the trimmer pre-Garcia models due to aesthetics. Garcia did market a "stripped down" model called the 72 which was the only Sako produced (to my knowledge) without checkering on the tops of the action dovetails and with rear open sights. It didn't last long and was replaced with the Model 74. The Deluxe versions imported under Garcia were heavier, but in every way as accurate and well-made, as the pre-Garcia versions. In fact, the only examples of truly atrocious wood checkering I've seen on a Sako have been on occassional pre-Garcias.

The Beretta company wanted to get into the handgun business in the U.S. (and eventually compete for the new military sidearm, which they obviously succeeded at). They negotiated to purchase the Garcia plant, and simultaneously, Garcia opted to get out of the firearms business (NO, this is NOT when Beretta became associated with Sako, that comes much later). In shutting down the Garcia Sporting Arms Corporation (and ultimately, all of Garcia -- the fishing reels went to Mitchell), various distributors vied for various lines. The Saturday Night specials from "budget" makers went to Florida, but that distributor was totally unsuited to distributing a line like Sako. So Sako (the Finnish ownership) approached Stoeger and eventually cut a deal to be its new U.S. distributor. This occured in about the early '80's. Some Stoegers were built on the L-series Sako actions, but mostly they were on the succeeding A-series.

Stoeger remained the Sako distributor until the parent of the Beretta Corporation bought controlling (or substantial) interest in the Sako/Tikka ownership, after which Sakos transitioned to distribution by Beretta USA (and remember, Beretta USA is a U.S. company and not the same as Pietro Beretta, although there is substantial common ownership.)

I'm sure that not all of my information is totally accurate, but this is at least "kinda" how it is.

Happy Hunting.

Stonecreek,
the model is LSA-55 and it is the deluxe model. Sako emailed me back and said that the gun was made in 1970. It looks almost exactly like a modern Tikka Whitetail Hunter Deluxe except a little trimmer, but I was comparing to a 25-06. I always did like the Whitetail Hunter and this gun having a Bofor Steel barrel would make it even better.
The 25-06 in this area is going for $750 which I think is too much. (Every sporting goods is marked up around here because of no competition.) The store won't go below $500 on the used gun because the new deluxe is so much. Thanks for the info guys.
Found a blue buck value in excellent shape to be $370 so throw in $50 for rings and you got $420.
How do you guys rate the action? If it is a good design I might bite the bullet.

Ithaca also marketed the LSA action in a rifle marked with their brand, but since you don't mention Ithaca, I assume this is one that was marketed as a Tikka.

I think that the bluebook price is about right on this model. It's likely a sound rifle, but there is little interest in these, which makes it worth only its value as a shooter.

Thanks again for all the information. I guess it is a Ithaca since that is what the recoil pad says but there were Tikka symbol stamped on the action. Never knew Ithaca maketed it as their own.
What I really like to find is a pre-garcia 308 or a standard action and rebarrel it to a 338-06. I have a 7rem mag in a heavy barrel and a 44 cal Ruger carbine but I need something to fill the space between the two. The go to gun that is used most of the time.

In 1977 I went to work for the largest SG distributor in North Texas just after they had relocated from downtown Dallas to Carrollton. We had a pile of Ithaca Tikka's, over a 100, that we could not sell that had been in inventory for several years. We cut the price to below our actual cost and I charged the Ithaca rep with helping me unload everything. We eventually transferred the inventory to a sister company in Chapin South Carolina, where they could sell them thru the largest SG telemarketing group in the US. The Ithaca guy was new to the Texas territory but had worked for Ithaca for many years based in Denver and Atlanta. He and I later became close friends and co workers and we have hunted and "hunted" together for many years. If I can find him tomorrow I'll see if I can find out what he knows about the origins of a Ithaca Tikka, he'll get a kick out of somebody asking about the old days. But I am certain that Tikka and SAKO were unrelated until 1983 or '84.
Stonecreek's info on Firearms Int'l sounds pretty accurate. I just remember trying to get my distributor to order some SAKO's at the Houston Show in Jan/Feb 1978 from the Stoeger people that I later worked for and heard nothing but bitching about the Garcia labelled SAKO stuff from the retail stores I sold to that were also at the Houston Show trying to buy distributor lines on a direct basis.
Ron