My buddy has had this rifle for a while, but he's not sure what it is or what it's worth. Anyone have some help? He just leaves it leaning in a corner of his house. Is it worth anything? Should he case it up or say screw it? What ammo does it fire?

Here are a bunch of pictures, some might not be so great, sorry. Tried to get all the important bits.

what your friend has there is an Italian Veterli Vitali 70/87/15. That series of rifles originally started out as a single shot black powder cartridge rifle and then they were modified to have a magazine/repeating fire capability, still firing the original black powder cartridge. Then when WW1 came along the Italians were in desperate need of rifles because of a lack of Carcano's. They then added the magazine that is on yours that uses the en-bloc clip of the Carcano and converted the rifle to fire the 6.5 carcano round in smokeless.

The bolt on these really aren't strong enough to handle the pressures of commercial 6.5 ammo and some people use reduced gallery type loads in them.

Italian Vetterli-Carcano. Shoots 6.5 Carcano, but I would not fire it as it was not designed to shoot modern ammunition.

-Mark

How about a 56 death notice in the title for dial up users ?

Thanks for the info guys...I'm still lookin around trying to find more, but that was a good start.
And sorry about the no 56k death notice