So, I wandered into a local shop today. This is a place that the building is new, but the inventory and shop have been around.

They have a shelf of "As-Is" ammo--my guess is stuff from estates, garage sales, or whatever.

I went and checked it out just because I am a sucker for old/weird stuff. I found an original box of 7.35 Italian. Dated April 1939 on the box. 3 Mannlicher clips with 6 rounds each. The box, clips, and headstamps all read "SMI" and some variation of "39, 939, 1939."

Awesome, rare, cool/weird stuff right? Well, here is where it gets into the "What was anyone thinking?" category. From the looks of it, someone took the time to pull all the bullets and replace them with soft points. The cases are original. They look very close/identical to some 6.5mm Carcano that I have had for a long time--same head shape/forming, same type of stamping. No idea about the powder, but I highly suspect they are still the original primers (which I would suspect are corrosive).

I had a 7.35 for a while, but had given up on ammo. Sold/traded off the 7.35 rifle years ago.

Any thoughts why someone would go through all the trouble to pull and swap bullets, without doing anything else? Is 7.35 really that unobtainable?

I've seen it on old/odd calibers where people wanted hunting ammo.   Lots of that old stuff was berdan primed and that was an easy way to get usable hunting ammo.

It used to be...back when this stuff was being brought home from the war, usually some ammo came home with the guns...

Since none was to be had commercially, a lot of bring back ammo was reloaded (well, bullets replaced) with hunting type soft points, see it quite a bit...

7.35 Carcano is a pretty scarce round to find. Privi and Hornady make it but they must be very small lots since I've never actually seen any. I bought a Finn used M38 short rifle for my Finnish collection and spent about a year searching for ammo. One Saturday I was at a local show, a older gentleman overheard me ask a dealer about it and told me he had just found a bunch in his garage that he forgot about after selling his Carcano. I ended up buying all 20 1939 dated boxes he had, I figure 360 round should last me awhile since its not a everyday shooter.

I picked up an almost identical box as you describe years ago from an online vendor, I can't even remember who it was, but the ammo was .264 diameter 6.5 Carcano cartridges. I think I recall reading on one of the forums that Interarms would import military ammo and then pull the projectiles and put in soft point projectiles and sell it that way for hunters back in the day.

S.G.Ammo has 6.5 in PPU for $.60 per round.

After I got two Carcanos in 7.35 in a deal, a buddy of mine asked "You have two Carcanos in 7.35 unobtainium????"

Seemed like a good way to put it, to me. I can find the stuff, but usually at $1.50-$2.00/round.

Fortunately for me, they came with some ammo and clips.

I have a 7.35.  I was able to find a couple boxes of old Norma ammo for it, but I ended up buying a set of Lee dies and some brass and bullets from I think Buffalo Arms, or maybe Graf & Sons.  I just checked and I'm pretty sure it was Buffalo.  They have proper headstamped brass for $0.79 each qty 1 or $0.62 each for 50.  That's not cheap, but 50 cases will last me a long time as much as I'm likely to shoot this thing.

Global Imports or Global Surplus?

I have a big repacked box of 7.35 on clips that my dad bought a long time ago.   He also had some original military  paper wrapped boxes from FW Woolworth.