Russian fought in WWI and WWII, as well as its own October Revolution with Mosin VS Mosin, the attrition of 17 million Mosins was pretty high. Finnland staedily resupplied themselfs from dead soviets and who knows how many litterd the feilds when the WWII was over.......What survived was dished out to other countrys and stored for WWIII.
The Soviet Union never fought a war with the SKS, they simply stored them too when the AK was numerous enough to replace them.
They will go up, My 70$ M-28's are worth 400$$ easily and my 60$-90$ M27's, M-28/30's are in the 250-300$ range, as well my M-24's and M-91's, 5 in a bundle for 100$ , with "possible missing parts and/or cracked stock" were rarely missing anything more than the rust they should have had.
I more than made a collection and sold off the duplicates.
The M-44's are picking up in price,from 65$ a few years back to an easy 180$, M-38's have gone double from 100$ and M-39s are starting to get a bit steeper in price, as the supply from distributers is, indeed , drying up.
Referbs in the wrap will get premo prices in 5 years, and the used ones will get 200$ easy, I bet.