Is there anything I should look for before firing this rifle? I have field stripped it and everything seems ok and the bore looks good, with good rifling. It is a SA rifle and the barrel doesn’t appear to have the same serial number as the receiver.

I don’t have any 30-06 of any kind on hand but it doesn’t even come close to passing the bullet test with .308, it cobbles it up to the brass. However it has rifling to the end so I’m guessing the diameter of the 308 isn’t the same?

Overall this thing looks like crap but I’m hoping it’s a shooter. My grandfather had it for at least 30 years and I don’t believe he ever fired it. It also hadn’t seen oil in that amount of time.

I am hoping to get some of my grandfathers rifles from his estate and was wondering what this one is worth.

Congrats on the new M1!

A few things:

1)   30-06 and .308 WIN / 7.62 Nato are the exact same bullet diameter.   So if the muzzle is swallowing a .308 round up to the case mouth the muzzle is toast.
2)  M1 Garand's were designed around a load that wasn't as hot as commerical hunting 30-06.   There is a lot of debate but to be safe, it is recommended to use either milsurp M2 ball ammo (loaded to the correct pressures) or get a Schuster gas plug that will help prevent damage to the gas system on the gun.
3)  Some guys  are really not too high on the Blue Sky guns.  The concern is the stamping process was so heavy that it could have damaged the barrel.
4)  Ultimately any Garand is worth the sum of its parts in value.  Even if the barrel is toast, the other parts might be good and you could have good bones to start from.  Replacing a shot out barrel isn't overly expensive and could mean your Garand is a great rifle for you.
5)  At the end of the day, if it shoots good, enjoy it and shoot it!

Ultimately, the "bullet test" is a poor substitute for a muzzle gauge.

M1 Garand barrels do not have a serial number on them. There are engineering drawing numbers , not serial numbers. Blue Sky does not have a generally good rep, however, if it is all you have, get the barrel replaced by a smith that knows M1 Garands. Timing is very important as are other technical aspects in replacing the M1 barrel. Do not use commercial hunting 30-06 ammo as the chamber pressures/powder burn rates are very important. Too fast a burn rate and the op rod will be bent and screw up the rifle. With that being said, you will notice the op rod does have a manufactured slight bend to it. That is supposed to be that way. Some newbies have tried to hammer out the bend. Not good.

Prvi Partizan, Federal and other commercial ammo manufacturers make ammunition specifically for the M1 that is the correct pressure and burn rate. There is also surplus Greek ammo on the market, but be aware that any 30-06 ammo manufactured during WWII has corrosive primers and will rust/corrode the barrel and other parts if not cleaned properly after firing. Regular modern bore cleaner will not remove the corrosive salt residue from corrosive ammo. Ammunition safe for the Garand is also available from: http://thecmp.org/cmp_sales/rifle_sales/m1-garand/

As stated previously, the field muzzle wear test of a bullet in the end of the barrel, with the result you stated indicated a worn out barrel at the muzzle end, at least. Most likely due to careless cleaning caused by the cleaning rod, or just plain shot out. Criterion and others make new barrels expressly for the M1 Garand.

Here are just a few Garand people that have a good rep:  http://garandguy.com/  ,   http://www.m1garand.com/m1-garand/m1-garand-rifle-sale/ ,  http://criterionbarrels.com/barrels/m1  , http://thecmp.org/cmp_sales/rifle_sales/m1-garand/
and the Garand Collectors Assoc for reference resources: http://thegca.org/

Congrats!

I had Orion 7 rebarrel my Garand many years ago. He was fast about it too. Check him out.

He's in New York.  Looking Island, maybe?  But he's pretty close to you, at any rate.

Get one of his stainless steel op springs too.

What is it worth you think? It isn't mine until we get everything appraised and all that jazz. He also has three Winchester 1873's, a couple Henry Martinis, two spencer carbines, and a couple of nice Winchester lever guns, the 1873's, Henrys, and spencers are in poor shape.

My dad and I are the only "gun guys" in the family and none of this stuff really gets my blood pumping but I kind of want the M1 if its shoots OK and it isn't going to cost me a bunch of money.

I recently bought a blue sky that also swallowed a bullet. It didn't even have have rifling the first 1/8" of the muzzle. I grouped pretty well though. It would shoot about 4 MOA. I did later rebarrel it myself with a $40 ebay barrel. I dont know what the deal with blue sky imported garands is but the worn muzzle is a common theme.

The other guys have answered you questions.  On price, your rifle is worth ~ $900 - 1100 in most places these days.  It's a shooter.

The Blue Sky stamping issue is a bunch of BS (IMO), but will detract from the value with collectors because of it.

It sounds like you need to get the rifle barrel inspected with proper gauges (muzzle and throat) to determine its condition.  A new barrel may not be out of the question.

An imported marked M1?  $550-800 depending on the buyer and condition.

And you have to buy it?

The estate will be split three ways (my mom and uncles) and I’m technically not entitled to anything. It could potentially be given to me but I may have to buy it. If the barrel is worn out I’ll just let them sell it.

Better to spend money with the CMP if you are going to buy a Garand.   The rifle will have been test fired, and if there is an issue once you receive it, CMP will fix it quickly.

Honestly if I am going to pay good money for a WWII rifle I would rather have a m1 carbine.

For a rough condition, reparkerized, import-marked rifle that doesn't pass the bullet test?  Not a chance.

Try half that.  ~$500-$600 is more likely.

You can get a better condition, non-refinished, non-import-marked Service Grade Garand with minimal muzzle wear from the CMP for $730.

i have a blue sky one...

I shot it two years for high power matches. I shot ok, but went full auto due to sear and trigger being worn out..

I also had to replace the clip latch on it..

Right now its sitting to have a barrel installed. The te was 5 and me is 3..  Its worn and i can shoot better now than it can hold.

I purchased a national match army built 308 about 15 years ago i used that for years than switched to AR15...

one of the days ill send it out to be rebarrel and no one will know thats a blue sky after the barrel has been replaced.

Agreed.  As I stated earlier, the value of just about any M1 right now is the sum of its parts.   The barrel is worth $0, but if it has some other decent parts on it might be worth a bit more, but not $1000 unless it has something ultra-rare in it, like a Winchester Op Rod or stock.

I don't disagree with you.  However, around here (NoVA), it would likely fetch that price.  I just sold a CMP field grade Winchester for $1300.  Paid $830 for it from the CMP some months back when they had them. It was in rougher shape than the OP's rifle.
Garands at the local shows in worse condition can, and do, go for the price I quoted.  YMMV

The only person who would pay $1000 for a common parts Import Garand with a worn out muzzle is someone who doesnt know any better

This here.

He’s got a couple other guns I’m going to try to get and let the Garand go.

I paid 250 in 98 for a blue sky, barrel looked like someone cleaned it with beach sand and a corded drill.

Some useful tests I did on my '54 H&R M1:
-Timing gage test (get a timing block for this)
-Check muzzle crown wear with an erosion gauge; this will give you some idea of expected accuracy
-Headspace check

I wound up installing a Schuster device, which ended up fixing a clip ejection problem with 2-3 rounds remaining.  I only shot strictly M2 Ball, AE M1 Garand loads, and some Prvi Partisan M1 loads from it.

Blue Sky are Korean imports from years ago.

With all of these rifles you know one thing....they did see service in the korean war.  There is no way to question that.

Up to about 10-15 years ago they got poo-pooed pretty well, rough, shot out...bla bla bla.  They are all very serviceable, and most shoot very well and need very little if anything to shoot.

IMHO any garand, does not matter what is going to touch on $1000 anymore....if you think you can find one for $500 buy all you can, that is a pipe dream....and if the poster that said it is worth that please pipe up with the location on them....I will hop a plane and rent a car to bring them back home and double my money over night.

Nothing wrong with the rifles that about every other surplus non refinished weapon suffers from.  Most shoot real well, some will not, it is a surplus item that is not refinished.

As to value, see what they are selling for in your area.....you will come within a few % of those prices.

Except that South Korea continued to receive large numbers of Garands from the US, even after 1953.  South Korea received hundreds of thousands of additional Garands in the late 1950s, through the 1960s, and into the mid-1970s.

So no, just because a Garand came from South Korea doesn't automatically mean that it saw service during the Korean War.

For sure you'll need a new barrel if you want it to hit something. My experiences with worn muzzles are all very bad. I've heard of a number (and seen one) of Blue Sky M1s with dented barrels. Way too much pressure was applied on the Blue Sky stamp and turned the barrel into an hourglass.

How did the muzzle get so worn? Army cleaning!! Some people will claim its from shooting and that's based on some guy's experiment. Well, I've owned a number of milsurps with badly worn muzzles, including one that was egg shaped. You get that by countless thousands of swipes by GI cleaning rods. If it really was belled out by bullets the wear would be uniform plus the throat erosion would be very high on top of that. Also had a couple Garands with terrible throats but a 2 reading on the muzzle.

Yes they did receive after the end of the Korean war....but not in great numbers.....if you have docs that prove otherwise I would love to see them.

In my research you can pretty much bank on if it is blue sky it was used in the war.

When did SK begin manufacturing their own military small arms?
Wasn't their next infantry rifle after the Garand the M16A1? I know Colt licensed production to Daewoo, who later designed the K1 and K2 to replace their M16's and M1's.

If that was the scenario, then it would be logical they either continued receiving Garands after fighting ended, or they had already received so many during the war that they didn't need/use them all.
Either way, it's unlikely they all saw action.

I concur.  Looking at just the rifle and not the family heirloom aspect.
- blue sky marked knocks value down to any one collecting.
- appearance, it’s just another mix master with mismatched wood.  
- bore condition is poor.  It may shoot ok for some time but sounds like it’s near the end of its life.   A good newish barrel will show 1/4 to 3/8 inch of bullet on the bullet test.   Yea it’s rudimentary and best done with a usgi FMJ for a “standard” ogive for comparison.

My advice is if you do but it or get it is to shoot it as is with milspec ammo then draw your conclusions.  It may shoot fine.  If you cannot get better than basketball you can easily have it rebarrelled.  It’s probably one of the least expensive guns to rebarrel by a M1 experienced gunshop.   Usually they unscrew the barrel, screw on a new one and use a pull through reamer.  Some guns I think the match ones are chucked in a lathe and more carefully finish reamed.  For usgi ball ammo either method is fine.  I did an M1a but not a garand.  Same exact procedure.

Here's a partial list of FMA (Foreign Military Assistance) records compiled from the National Archives, showing that there were at least 349,506 M1 Garands provided to South Korea between 1963 and 1973.  That's a decade or two after the end of the Korean War.  And there's very likely more, since the records are incomplete.

http://usriflecal30m1.com/Demilled/FMA.aspx

perhaps you are correct....do you have any link to a real guberment site with numbers.

No, but you're welcome to thumb through the paper records in the National Archives if you'd like.  

https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=*:*&f.parentNaId=603944&f.level=fileUnit&sort=naIdSort%20asc

You start adding those numbers up and that's a lot of M1's that went to other countries. I wonder how many we've gotten back, will get back, and how many are gone forever?

I just don't operate under the if it is on the internets it is true.

The numbers just seem a little off to me.....dates seem a bit odd for the entire document you linked.

That's a well-respected M1 Garand data site, not a Facebook post.

Unless you're willing to personally go read through the data at the National Archives yourself, every source of similar data is going to have to be taken on trust, whether on the internet or in printed material.

If you'd like to continue your "research", you should contact that website's admin and request access to his FMA data source.  Maybe he has some records that he could send you, and save you a trip to DC.

Also, since you seem to be so skeptical of sources, please provide me the source from your "research" which states that all Garand rifles provided to South Korea arrived prior to the Korean War, and therefore necessarily must have seen action during the Korean War.  That assertion on your part, after all, is what started this discussion...  I must assume it's an absolutely unimpeachable primary source, considering your statement that "there is no way to question [it]".