i know for 80 bucks i grabbed that gun up lol She was selling his crap for pennies on the dollar, is there a way to tell the exact year of the gun i bought it late 80's serial number is 121240 or is that number good for reference
Hmmm... If it is a Norinco SKS-S it may give you the last two digits of the year it was made like mine...
92 #####. They will be the first two digits of the serial number and they will be separated by a space between the year and the number.
If it is not a SKS-S (It will say on it). Then the only way you can really effectively judge the date is the Arsenal stamp. Does it have a Triangle with numbers in it on the receiver? If yes... the only arsenal you can date is the /26\ arsenal. All others can only be roughly dated by the type of parts it has.
Norinco produced the SKS-S in an effort to fulfill the high US demand for the SKS in the late 80's and early 90s. Importers shipped millions of Chinese SKS's into the US and eventually ran out of military surplus SKS's. In turn they started producing them commercially. Once the love affair kind of fizzled out they started producing "Sporter" models like the SKS-S, M, D and other variants to keep up with the new American love affair of the AK-47. Then the AWB hit and the SKS was neutered but that's another story.