I love AKs, they're my favorite rifle platform for whatever autistic reason but not one of them is worth $2500, not even a T1 parts kit if you can find one.
Early on I was a total vatnik about AKs, to the point where I had wet dreams about finding early, original, intact Russian milled AKs at garage sales. Then I inherited an Arsenal SLR-95 (postban with hideous thumbhole stock), and finally got my hands on an OG AK-47 (made in '57) for a little while as part of a trust (low round-count, not a shot-out example).
Instead of being a rifle that exuded Slavic purity & was infused with the spirit of Stalin, the thing had a receiver & barrel which would've gotten a Chinaman sent for immediate reeducation, being responsible for such a hogged-out, haggard conglomerate of parts. And is the one time I couldn't even say that Century was at fault.
The thing which rescued my esteem for the AK was that Arsenal, because nothing else would've worked if made to the standards of that Soviet example, certainly not any rifle from the West. Even neutered, the SLR-95 was an exceedingly well-made & accurate rifle. It proved to me that the design itself was sound as a platform for improvement, along with how much of a difference there is between a shit AK and a good AK, and how little daylight there actually is between a good AK & shit AK.
You know the only reason 5.45 was popular in the US is because it was so cheap people would buy 5.45 AR uppers and get those 1,000 rd ammo tins for next to nothing. I'm sorry you don't know shit about fuck but the import scene being garbage doesn't magically make domestic producers good.
It was never that cheap anywhere I lived, even during the happy times when everything was abundant. For a long time it seemed like most places were still selling it (and the rifles) for prices before the flood, and they only dropped when they realized people weren't buying it. I think it was even a Sportsman's with pallets of 5.56 & 5.45 on the floor next to each other, and the Russian stuff was fully 3x the price of good ol' Lake City quiet-pills, and ARs weren't exactly ubiquitous either. I would've thought that markup for 5.45 was fair based on rarity of difficulty importing, but holy shit, I found out they were importing tons of that ammunition for comparitive pennies. I was taught (by an actual Jew) to take the average wholesale price, double it, then add between 7-14% (depending) to find the proper retail; but people were regularly hawking 5.45 for triple what retail should've been, like straight up dumb nigger prices.
And the same went for 5.7... only much worse.
Likewise, that doesn't mean a stamped or milled AK is worth what they go for now (they're not). If you missed the boat, you missed the boat.
I was on the boat, but got off when I learned the truth about Russian boats.
