Quote History Originally Posted By fury413rb:
How do you identify East German magazines?
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They're pretty unique, it can be hard to tell from pictures on the internet, but once in your hand it's easy to tell the difference. I have seen some particularly well made Hungarian and Polish mags that looked close.
Some good info here:
https://smallarmsreview.com/identifying-and-collecting-the-7-62x39mm-ak-47-akm-magazine/The main and easiest way to tell, is in the stamping of the ribs in the mag body, EG's are extremely
crisp as compared to most other AK mags which have softer edges and gentle slopes. Yugo's also have this type of crisper stamping.
EG's will also have spot welds on the spine and on the front that are perfectly spaced and centered when compared to others. And the spot welds on the reinforcement plates are always cleaned up to be perfectly smooth, especially compared to Romy mags. Very often you can find Hungarian and some Polish mags that have the weld marks ground out like this.
The bottom plate also features crisp stamping when compared to some others, but the problem with floorplates in general is I find a lot mags with incorrect ones, so it's not the most reliable identifier and some other mags have come with nice crisp floorplates too.
If they haven't been painted, the EG's also have a beautiful and very distinctive blued finish which you don't see much. All in all very high quality mags.