how to tell if my sks is a type 56

While there are still plenty of places in the world where an SKS could be had for a goat or a few chickens, in America, they have unfortunately garnered collector status and are no longer the dime-a-dozen truck guns they once were. For example, if your serial number is x02xxxx, your year of production would be 1958 (1956=0, so 1956+02=1958). When I took apart to clean off cosmoline, found very bad rust pitting in 4 places on reciever and rusted out under the wood. AT THIS TIME, RECEIVER BARREL STOCK The SKS-56 was encountered frequently during the Vietnam war. Type 56 SKS rifles seem to be split into three groups: sino-soviet ones with an arsenal stamp and cyrillic prefix, later ones that have an arsenal stamp and numeric serial numbers, and these so-called "ghost" ones that have no arsenal stamp, no cyrillic prefix, and 5-digit serial numbers. 16. // -->