What kind of 8mm surplus ammo is this?

[michaelkih]

So, I bought a C&R MG42 and it came with a little bit of surplus ammo. I'm trying to figure out if any of this is worth keeping or just selling. I honestly don't really shoot corrosive ammo anyways, so I don't know anything about these head stamps, but I'd still like to know what this is, and possibly keep / sell it. Thank you for the help.

I have two cans full of 700 rounds of this stuff....
I think it's Turkish. Any good?



I then have a 250 round belt of this stuff....German? Good?





Then a 250 round belt of this stuff....mixture of plated and not plated with the same headstamps....Czech? Good?




Then about 50 rounds of this stuff....German? Good?


And last, about 50 rounds of this stuff....No clue?

[Roscoeturner]

For the most part it is the kind you do not want to shoot in an expensive firearm.

[JBaum]

I'm seeing 40, 44, and 49 headstamp dates. 66 years old and older.

Regardless of who the manufacturer is, I wouldn't shoot that in a 98k I didn't like, let alone an MG42.

A 1/50th of a second hang fire and the gun can blow. Even if I didn't like the gun, I still like my face and arms without perforations.

You wouldn't buy a $40,000 BMW and siphon gas from the junk yard for it, would you?

The stuff with the little six pointed star is Israeli.

Save it as a collector's item. It isn't safe to shoot, although I've seen pictures of guns that did shoot 60+ year old ammo. Wasn't pretty.

[DARIVS ARCHITECTVS]

John's a bit strong but he's right about the ammo you have. It's risky to use because of the the locations of where it came from, the quality. However, 1970's steel cased Romanian is still not bad for old surplus ammo. Some people use 1950's Yugoslavian despite the hard primers, because the MG-42 can slam the (Try a different word.) out of primers and make them work, but it will not work in my k43 rifle (light primer strikes, and it doesn't fit the chamber properly, creating stuck cases). The 1940's vintage however was made when ammo was made in large quantities under the duress of war, so the quality is very questionable. In real terms, using large amounts of it will sooner or later cause a bad round to damage your firearm. I ran 1936 Turk ammo and it ran perfect, but it was designed with high powder loads for bolt action rifles, and damaged my MG-42 (and ran it at a high speed of 1500 rpm!). The gun was repaired, but I learned that lesson the hard way. The wartime stuff is suspect, and if you are not sure of the quality, the makeup of the bullets and powder charge, avoid it. The temptation to save money and buy cheap old surplus is very strong, but if you get the wrong stuff, your gun and your face may suffer grave injury.