USMCGT0331 How many stocks were turned in and are out in the wild?
I am proud to own one.. and it will remain in my collection forever.
You definitely should be proud of that one, it's a great stock and a beautiful build! I'm jealous, I don't even have a Mod 0 built yet!
To clarify, these stocks were never "turned in" or are "returns" like the M40A1 stock that McMillan sold about a decade ago. For the A1 stocks, people call them "return stocks" because the USMC traded them in (returned) to McMillan for new A4 stocks.
These Mk13 stocks were never returned to McMillan, so they aren't "return" or "turn ins" or anything else along those lines. A friend had purchased everything from a DRMO sale, then offered to sell it to another friend and myself a few months later. The 2 of us purchased the Mod 0 lot and I ended up buy out my friend's portion a few weeks later. After purchasing all the stocks and parts, I reached out to Kelly McMillan and asked for his help.
He verified that these are McMillan stocks that were legally purchased directly from the government. He also confirmed that these stocks were sent to Crane for use in the Mk13 program. With this knowledge in hand, I had custom certificates of authenticity made to my specs. I designed them, did the write-up and I created the crossed Mk13 watermark. My goal was absolute security and to ensure that these certificates could not be faked. Additionally, there aren't any extra certs, just 1 cert for each stock. Kelly also volunteered to sign and date every single COA, and I numbered the certs to each stock. I am truly grateful for his assistance with this project and he was more than happy to help! Kelly is a great guy and he really cares about our community.
Please don't take my post the wrong way, I'm not trying to criticize you or anyone else. I've heard this "return stock" nomenclature over the past year from dozens of people and figured I'd finally address it. I'd certainly prefer it if people just referred to these as Mod 0 stocks or something like that, and leave out any "return" naming. It's nitpicky, but it's historically accurate.
And now I'm finally going to answer your question, lol. After all the stocks sell, I'll probably release information on them (obviously nothing about the sales and the buyers). I'd like to put out a serial number list, what the fiberglass color is and if the stock was painted. I value my buyer's privacy, so I won't share anything further than this.
I hope this clarifies some stuff and answers your question.