Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian, and I want to talk for a moment about the fact that we have this
just really cool influx of firearms out of Ethiopia that are available on the commercial market today.
These were brought in by Inter Ordnance, and they are available through RoyalTigerImports.com,
which I can't link to, but you can certainly find it easily enough.
It is to me, ... it's one of these really cool instances when a whole treasure trove
of firearms history is opened up and made accessible.
And there have been some times when stuff like this happened before. Back in the '50s
Interarms ... they bought like everything that was in the Spanish arsenal system.
All the weird leftover stuff, largely from the Spanish Civil War,
which had brought in surplus from all over the world.
All of that stuff Franco sold to Sam Cummings of Interarms who brought it into the US and sold it.
And we have a lot of really interesting and unusual guns in the US as a result of that sale.
We had a similar thing happen when IMA, International Military Antiques,
bought out the entire old armoury of Nepal.
And Nepal, by the way, not a British colony as I have been corrected severely several times.
At any rate, this Nepalese trove of arms was this fantastic look into
the history of British small arms, because the British handed down their weapons to Nepal.
Like every time the British upgraded they gave the old stuff to the Nepalese,
and the Nepalese never got rid of any of it. And then it all comes into the US.
And we have the same thing that has happened now with Ethiopia.
And with Ethiopia we have another instance kind of like Spain,
where all sorts of different stuff came into Ethiopia over the past 140 years.
So there are examples of virtually everything from the Golden Age of colonial empires
and single-shot black-powder rifles, to the advent of the modern smokeless powder repeater,
to World War One equipment, to World War Two equipment, and then even to later Cold War stuff.
So the Ethiopians were supplied and supported by different powers throughout the last 150 years,
and they never seem to have really gotten rid of much of anything.
And then so when they sold basically their entire stockpile of obsolete arms to Inter Ordnance,
we get this great mix of everything.
So on the old side there are Vetterli rifles, there are Gras rifles like this, there are Gewehr 88s, although that's a little bit newer.
Berdan rifles, the Russians supplied a tremendous number of Berdan rifles
because Ethiopia was an Orthodox Christian state.
And the Russians were as well at that time, the Orthodox Christian
Imperial power in Russia wanted to support ... what it perceived as a brother nation in Ethiopia.
So Berdan rifles.
Once we make the jump to repeating smokeless powder rifles we have Gewehr 88s,
we have Carcanos, we have early Enfields. I saw a picture of a Lee-Speed,
an early Long Lee rifle, but commercial manufacture, not military production.
That stuff's all in there.
You have Lebel rifles, you have Berthier rifles, the French supported Ethiopia ... during this early period.
But there was also a lot of French surplus that got into Ethiopia later on.
We have World War Two surplus.
We have a tremendous number of M1 carbines, of British Number 4 Enfield rifles that were in there.
After the war the Ethiopians go looking for more materiel and they get some support from,
well over time, the Czechs, the East Germans, there are East German production Mausers in there.
There are Czech production rifles, Czech Mausers, Czech vz 52s.
There are a bunch of French MAS 49-56s that are in this stockpile.
It is literally this panoply of guns.
So I know there are some people who are looking at this and are like, "Oh yeah, Ian's just shilling for Inter Ordnance."
And the fact the matter is, despite the fact that these guns are all in a relatively rough condition,
it's this treasure trove that we just don't see very often. There are very few opportunities like this around.
And so folks who are interested in military surplus collecting,
I think this is a time period to like watch carefully what's showing up through Inter Ordnance. ...
In two different ways. First off, just the guns themselves,
having a good source of say M38 Carcanos that aren't from Finland. So they're not Finn marked.
That's something that was really pretty scarce, and now a batch of them have come in and become available to people.
And then aside from just the guns, the specific Ethiopian history.
So if you saw the video this morning you may recall that this is a Gras rifle
that I think was rebuilt by the Belgians to send to Ethiopia.
It is marked here as property of Empress Taytu, who was Menelik II's wife and Empress.
And then it stayed in the arsenal until it was actually re-issued out by the Italians in the 1930s to
someone, I don't know exactly who, but part of Italian East Africa.
And that sort of nation specific history is something that you will not find anywhere else,
because it ... happened in Ethiopia, and it's only there on the guns that are coming out of Ethiopia.
So, YouTube is a little weird about things,
I can't do a whole lot to specifically talk about gun suppliers.
But in this case I want to try and do my best to give a big thanks to Inter Ordnance,
because Uli there has been very gracious in giving me access to stuff.
Especially as we had the height of the pandemic,
and at this point we may be going into a second height of pandemic lockdown.
But I had the opportunity to travel out and look in person at some of this stuff in the very beginning,
before any of the lockdowns, and when he was bringing in some of the Mausers,
like this FN contract Ethiopian Mauser, again something that was incredibly scarce.
Not a lot of them came in, but there was this influx of available examples that were out there for people to get.
At any rate, I had the chance to go there and look in person once,
and I hope to do so again when I'm able to travel out there again.
But in the meantime, he's been very generous in sending rifles over, like these two,
for me to film here and show to you guys.
Now, of course he has an ulterior motive in that because he wants to sell stuff,
but I think I'm very happy to be a part of that, because like I said, this legitimately is a cache of
firearms history, ... the likes of which we will not see elsewhere for a long time I suspect.
So I do want to touch on the condition, because, yeah, a lot of these guns are really beat-up.
All three of these examples are really beat-up.
However, having talked to a variety of people who've bought guns out of this batch,
some of them do in fact clean up really nicely.
Some of them don't. This guy will never have any finish on it again, nor will this one really.
And the rear sight is never coming back onto that rifle.
But as long as you understand what it is you're getting into, I think the history on these makes them still a good value.
So, obviously there are pictures on Royal Tiger's website, you can take a look at their pictures.
Ooh, we can have them fall down.
There are pictures that you can see on Royal Tiger's website, but it's not the best organised thing ever.
... Like it's not itemised by individual rifle, there is a bit of a luck of the draw going on here.
And frankly it's the same for me, like the fact that this had an Empress Taytu mark, I had no idea.
Didn't discover what that was until it actually got here. So.
Anyway, I wanted to give a little bit of explanation for the people who are wondering
why there's so much Ethiopian stuff that keeps showing up.
Well, this is why. I have access to it, and it's a brand new and very cool piece of firearms history for me to delve into.
And I've been getting a lot of ... questions from people asking where this stuff came from and how they can get it.
So, I wanted to [go through] that. Big thanks to Inter Ordnance.
And hopefully those of you who are interested will take advantage of
the opportunity that you have to get your hands on some of this yourselves.
Thanks for watching.
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