Unfortunately VZ.24's are kind of like a lot of popular older military arms like Mosin Nagants when it comes to their history.
A lot of Chinese Contract VZ24's have been imported into the US. Many of the Chinese rifles were captured by the Japanese Army during the war as well and put into service with the Japanese who equipped several divisions with them.īut the Chinese and Japanese contract rifles were designated with a large P in front of the serial #, or in some seemingly rarer cases with a large C stamped on the butt stock in front of the serial #. Between the late 1920's and 1938 the Czechs made almost 200,000 VZ24's for Chinese forces, and in 1937 a smaller number I don't know offhand for the Japanese Navy. I believe what you may have is either a Chinese Army or Japanese Navy contract rifle. I can't tell if I am seeing things, but are there the faint remnants of a "P" in front of the serial # on the receiver? Or is there a "C" in front of and slightly higher than the serial # on the left side of the butt stock? Also, is there a letter prefix in front of the serial # on the bolt perhaps? Usually the ones you see marked with the 1937 on the receiver ring are Chinese or Japanese contract rifles. That's a quick list, it's late and I am sure I am forgetting some. Recipients included a number of South American nations, several European ones (especially Romania where it was their primary long rifle before and during WW2), as well as the Chinese Army and the Japanese Navy. Between 19 the VZ.24 was heavily exported by the Czechs to a number of different countries. Good job.What you have is a contract rifle made in 1937 for a country outside of Czechoslovakia. It is getting tough to find original Czech VZ-24's that are not dicked with. Your rifle is a nice find because, like others have stated, many times the receiver crests have been ground off, but even more importantly in your case many rifles from that time were actually forced into German service and completely remarked or stamped with all kinds of German marks similar to K98 Mausers. E4 is the code for the #2 plant at Bystrica, even though the receiver left side would still say Brno.
Your serial number of 3682-R4 puts production right at the end of 1937 or beginning of 1938, which coincides with the E3(lion)38 stamp which is the original Czech military acceptance stamp from entering service in 1938, with final assembly at the Brno plant #1.
VZ-24's produced at Brno for export to other countries have a different serial number pattern. The original Z block guns were completed and the A1 block started in the middle of 1926 production, but this serial number sequence was only done for rifles produced for Czechoslovakia. The R4 simply means it was the fourth R block, after rifle # 9999Z they went to 0000A1.
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