Among the many Swedish Mauser carbines imported into the United States is an interesting batch of guns marked “InterArms G33/50”. What are these actually?
They are rifles imported by InterArms, of course, and they began life as proper Swedish m/94 and m/94-14 carbines. Upon import, though, their manufacturing dates were ground off and replaced with that G33/50 designation. In addition, their original Swedish unit disks were replaced with new disks that said “Cal 6.5mm Swedish – Made in Sweden”. These changes allowed the rifles to comply with all import marking requirements without having anything that would appear to be a newly added importer’s mark.
While I cannot prove it, I suspect this was done as a marketing trick to make the guns more appealing than standard carbines. The designation is very similar to the legitimate German “G33/40”, which was a short mountain troops’ carbine, and highly desirable. In the days before the internet allowed easy access to information, this easily could have been interpreted to be an elite Swedish alpine carbine.
The replacement markings make these rifles largely shunned by collectors who are looking for original condition guns, but they do remain both excellent handy shooters and also a source of proper parts to restore other Swedish carbines.
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