Can Anyone Read This?

[JesseCuster]

Ok, this is from the butt of the Israeli K98k that I referenced in my other thread in here. This strip of masking tape is on the butt, and there's writing on it in blue ball point pen.

One might expect that it was Hebrew, considering that the rifle lived in Israel for quite a few decades .... but it isn't. Does anyone out there have any idea what it might mean? I Photoshopped the text a little darker so that it would actually be legible.

 

[Oberst Freitag]

is it cyrillic?...doesnt look like anything i've seen before

 

[Sclass12]

"If found, please return to..."

 

[Velcro Warrior]

"Not a Toy"


Sorry, but I think this may turn into a "What's this rifle say?" quote thread...

 

[JesseCuster]

It's starting to piss me off, really. I want to clean some of the oil and dirt and such off this stock, but I don't want to take the tape off until I know what it says ........ but nobody can figure out what it says!

Looks like I'm stuck with a dirty stock for a little longer.

 

[Bolt]

I can only tell - that's sure ain't cyrillic.

 

[Ghad]

If the text only comes visible after the rifle has been in a fire, hopefully it doesnt mean "one rifle to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them"

 

[Troels]

/me calls Klaus from DBDUK.

 

[Klaus]

Yea, we used Kar89s one time at basic training in the army.. it was pretty awesome
I cant recognize the language, looks like an east european, it propably belonged to a soldier who immigrated from eastern europe
Ill keep some heads busy on this (people who served in the 40s, 30s) and msg back when and if i get an answer!

 

[Zoring]

Should post in the surplusrifle.com forum, lot of experts on all sorts of firearms in there, they can probably help you out more than we can

 

[JesseCuster]

Thanks guys. Surplusrifle.com is about the only place I -didn't- post this question.

 

[Zbojnik]

Well sure isn't Cyrillicor Polish. Your best bet would be to post it in Surplus Rifle. I'll see what my uncle can get out of it. He speaks 13 languages.

 

[Piron]

It looks not like any of the languages I know. Imo, its looks like a name, something like 'Aspu (Ajpu?) Juyup'. Maybe referring to the former owner?
Also the kind of the tape and the blue ball pen used. I dont know how long you have the rifle, but it doenst look like it its very old (the tape I mean).

 

[Fu. Svedberg]

To me it looks like a name tag possibly a eastern european name (roman alphabet)

 

[JesseCuster]

I've only had it for a week or so. Actually, 5 days, come to think of it.



When I say "old," in relation to the masking tape, I don't mean "1945," obviously. Unfortunately, there's no way to really narrow the age range too much. Ball point pens came into common use in 1945, masking tape was invented in 1925.

I'm thinking the tape appears to be 15-20 years old.




As far as it being a name, that's what I'm thinking, too. I've googled possible names made up of those letters, haven't come up with much. "Juyup" appears to be a fairly common name in Korea. I did get a hit on "ajpuyup," from a site I think is Guatemalan (ending in .gt), but the document containing it wouldn't load. The site was related to SEGEPLAN, which appears to be the "Secretariat of Planning and Programming for the Presidency."

It has something to do with Guatemala. It is known that quite a lot of the Israeli K98k's went there.