they were as common as dirt when I was in the National Guard but then I had no use for them in reenacting,Now I have an Israeli 98K mauser and they fire the nato round the stock is clearly marked 7.62 mm yesterday I found 242 rounds in disintegrating link belt in a plastic bag at Montys pawn shop, they were a bargain so I snapped them up. now if I can find 8x52 Rmm brass I could have some blanks made for my Siamese mauser. or I could probably either trade it for a couple of low grade 98ks or sell it for a good price and buy some more k98s
mauser blanks the HQ catalog and the shooters catalog sells them also most of the vendors who follow the reenactment events have mauser blanks for sale, these guys sell lots of them to the soldaten. I bought my last 200 from Wephaus
Mauser blanks no they are cheaper than live rounds , For one thing the quality of the brass is much lower than live rounds when surplus blanks are used they are usually cheap brass and Berdan primed so they are not intended to be reloaded, the blanks I started doing German reenacting were a necked down something else and it slips my mind what the original caliber of these rounds were originally. then there is the economics of ammo use, if you cant buy large quantities of blanks there will be no battles, if there are no battles nothing else will be purchased so vendors strive to keep blank ammo prices low. places like Sportsmans guide and cheaper than dirt want to get their blanks purchased to get the reenactors ordering from them other items. Independent blank suppliers with a hand press and dies make lots of rounds from once fired brass, now I don't know where they get their powder from. It is much different from live nitrocellulous (smokeless powder)Primers cost less when purchased in large quantities. Perhaps you are thinking of getting into reenactment, its a great hobby but ammo is just one of the unavoidable expenses. figure anywhere between a nickel to a quarter a round. My last batch was about 3 cents a round
