You need to strip the park off a cast part to see what I mean. Naked, the part should look just as horrible as mine. I think it comes down to either forging marks or casting marks. I much prefer forging marks along with the benefit of forged parts.
I should have mentioned that the standard models are going for $1400 around here. With loaded, SS barrels, NM, and SM being higer to much higher. Go out to gun action sites and you should find NIB M1As for much less than my retail stores. Additionally, the retail stores here don't want to do transfers on M1As because it will take away business from them. Compound this with the reduction of independent FLLs, it is getting bad here in the bay area.
This ranting aside, I feel the best reasons for buying one are:
1- you live in CA and want to start shooting in service rifle matches. Even then, I've notice that the M1As don't outshoot the Garands in the matches at all. So you may want to just shoot the Garand and live with the two-round clip problem and the single loading hassle.
2- you are collecting and want an M1A in your collection to round it out... big three semi-auto service rifles/M1, M14, AR15 (or M16 if you are lucky).
3- It brings back memories of boot camp or past service.
The problem with the M1As are that good parts are just too darn expensive compared to ARs. You will throw more than twice the price trying to get match accuracy and/or maintaining that accuracy. Plus, you will never really approach the accuracy of the AR with the same ease of doing so.
Some people will point out the classic AR problem of "sh!tin& where it eats". This is not a concern service rifle matches due to the low round count used in the match. Also, more matches are being held on reduced courses which favors the AR with the much lower recoil for the sitting rapid fire and the prone rapid fire. Since more rounds are fired in the 600 yard prone than any other, reduced courses also favor the AR here.
Yep, M1As are great for newcomers in CA. Springfield must really like the situation here in CA as it favors their product line. What ever happened to equal rights. I don't see it at the firing line.