At the last Lakeland Pistol & Rifle club gunshow, the only gunshow worth going to around here, I was pricing Springfield Arms M1As.  The best prices I found were; SS- wood or synthetic stock, $1250.00 and blue steel- synthetic stock only, $1100.00.  All NIB.  Were these good prices?

Here in SoCal that would be considered a steel.

Would that dealer happen to have a website? Email? Phone number? mailing address? Be within driving distance? Be close to a major airport? [:P]

I recently purchased a NIB Standard M1A with a synthetic stock for $1,011.00.  I think the "Loaded" rifle was another $200.00. The loaded rifles have a heavier, non-chrome-lined barrel and National Match front sight and flash suppressor. The trigger is National Match as well.

My standard M1A has a great trigger. I wonder if it is actually a national match, because for some reason they put a national match front sight on the rifle... I'm not complaining [:)]

I don't like the synthetic stock. It has a course textured finish that is probably supposed to give your grip more traction; however, the course finish rubs your cheek raw from the recoil motion.  Even worse, the course finish chips off easily! Bump your stock against something hard with just a little too much force, and a little chip of the textured fish comes off exposing the gray undercoat. Also, where the removable trigger group contacts the outside of the stock, the textured finish sticks to the metal and comes off.  This isn’t too big of a deal because the metal covers up the gray undercoat once the rifle is put back together.

I would spend the extra $100.00 for the wood stock (so it looks pretty for show and tell), and then buy a nice synthetic stock from http://www.shotgunnews.com/members/fred/pages/Fredspagesindex.html when you want to take your rifle into the field.

Over all, I love the M1A.  It is a great shooter!  It has a whole different feel than the AR15. It feels much more substantial, not only because of the larger cartridge, but because of the solid steel construction of all the parts. I would have a difficult time choosing between it and my AR15.

My M1A "Loaded" Standard was about $1700. This is CA, of course.

mattja

New Springfields go for $1100-1400 around where I live, good used prebans show up for around $ 1000 if you hunt around and pester the hp shooters who switch to AR's.The loaded rifles are OK but they still need a little work to make them shoot better, The quasi match sights need tightened up and there 5 minute match trigger job can be cleaned up and then glass bed it and the biggest thing is to match modify the gas cylinder.

$1100 for a blued synthetic stock M1A is the gun shop (Bill's Buy and Sell on Fremont Street) price here in Las Vegas.