Don't Get Scammed! How to Identify a Real Raufoss Round

Video Transcript:

The first thing you're going to want to take a look at is the head stamp. We're going to go through some head stamp varieties here, and this is going to cover about 98 percent of what you'll run into out there. The most common head stamp you're going to see is LC for Lake City. Production years are going to be anywhere from 2000 up to current year. The next most common is the Winchester WCC head stamp. That's pre-Lake City contract. And those are going to be somewhere in the 90s, most likely 94. Then we've got our Belgian Brass FNB head stamp. I've only ever seen 91 in 93, but other years may exist. Another head stamp variant is Greek HXP. Of all the years that exist, I've only ever seen an 89 in person. The final head stamp we have here today is TE with two digit year, in this case 90 for 1990. There's not a lot of information out there on this head stamp, but it's believed to be French.

If you have any more information on what this may be, let us know in the comments below. The next thing you're going to want to take a look at is the projectile and the projectile shape. So on the right here, we have our Mark 211 Ralfus. We're comparing that against our API here on the left, which has a more traditional projectile shape. And these are actually what's usually used when people make counterfeit Mark 211 Ralfus. So if you look, the Ralfus projectile is real fat, and you can see kind of a faint line right there where it starts to taper inwards and the tip on it is real rounded and kind of fat as compared to the API, which has the more traditional gradual taper with a more sharp and pointed end. Next thing you want to take a look at is the paint color.

So Ralfus rounds are going to have a green tip with either a white or a silver band. So for the Lake City, it's going to be a green tip and a white band, and it's going to have hard edges like it was dipped or painted on. It wasn't sprayed on. This is a WCC and it also has a green tip with a white band. The white band is usually a little bigger on the WCCs and the green in the tip has a little more yellow in it as compared to the Lake City. Now, something important to note is that these projectiles were most likely painted at the plant after the cartridge was loaded. So if you look, you see some of the paint is on the case itself. That doesn't mean that this is a bad counterfeit job. This came out of a sealed can. So that's OK to see. Now, for the TE, HXP and FNB loadings, the projectiles going to have the same shape as all the others, except it's going to have a green tip and a silver band. And instead of the hard lines, like you see with the WCC and the Lake City, if you look real closely, you can see that it was sprayed on.

There's a little bit of a fuzzy line on either side with a little bit of overspray. The next thing you want to take a look at is the copper on the projectile right where the paint ends. You want to see if that looks uniform and smooth as compared to the rest of it. The reason being is on the real Mark 211 Ralfus, the paint always just kind of chips off a little bit. And when people take a API and they repaint it, it can look a little too perfect. So what they'll do is they'll take a cup of rocks or gravel and they'll put a nose down in there after they give it the new paint job. They'll grind it around. And what that'll do is it'll make the paint look a little more believable, but it'll also kind of chew up the surface of the copper jacket where the paint ends.

Moving on, you're going to want to take a look at the case neck and look at the crimp or the chamfer on it. So this is WCC. This is Lake City. And this is FNB. The chamfer on this is kind of like a gradual bevel inward. So a lot of military loadings have that. So just because it has a chamfer, it doesn't mean that it is a genuine Mark 211 Ralfus. But if it's like this API and it completely lacks a neck crimp or a chamfer, then it's definitely not an original loading. It might be a counterfeit. As for the crimp on our HXP and our TE, it's less of a gradual bevel and it's more of a slight step in. If you take a look at it, it can be very faint, but it's always going to be there. For Winchester and Lake City loadings, if you take a look at where the projectile meets the brass case from the top down, you'll also be able to see this black neck sealant. It almost kind of looks like tar.

And if it doesn't have that, that's a good indicator that this is not an original loading because U.S. military contract calls for that neck sealant to be in place. Another thing that military contract calls for is visible proof of the annealing process. So if you take a look at the case neck, you should see a discoloration from the annealing on the brass. And the case neck is usually going to have quite a bit of like this dirty look to it, this oxidization. So if it looks really, really highly polished and clean, that's a good indicator that it's been tampered with or might just be a fake. Next, we're going to take a look at the primer sealant colors. And why this is so important is because Lake City and Winchester brass, for example, are commercially available. So people will reload into that brass all the time.

But one thing that's really difficult to get right is the primer sealant color, opacity and amount for Lake City head stamp 2018, 2019 and 2020. The primer sealant color is going to be a red, almost like a lipstick, but it's going to be a little bit more see through and it's not really going to be globbed on. It's going to be a thin bead around the edge of the primer. For the pre 2018 primer sealant colors, there are quite a few, a good sampling to give you an idea of what to look for. First one being a really dark purple that's put on in a real thin coat around the edge of the primer. It looks similar to the 2018 and up red, except obviously it's dark purple. Probably the most common primer sealant for pre 2018 Lake City is going to be a variety of different pastel colors. It can be purple, dark purple, pink, kind of like a real light off white. And it's always going to be really globbed on thick, kind of messy looking.

Now, there's also a green color that Lake City uses for a lot of their primer sealants in their military loadings. But I haven't personally seen that on the Mark 211 loadings, but that doesn't mean there aren't some out there. The Winchester WCC is really easy, really straightforward. No matter what year it is, it's always going to have red primer sealant. With the FNB head stamps, it's going to have a black primer sealant, but you may have to look closely because it can be really faint. The Greek HXP head stamp is going to have a green primer sealant on it. It's almost going to have an iridescent quality to it. The TE head stamp is the most unique in that it has a black primer sealant, but the primer itself is really rounded looking and it's staked in on three sides. So now you know what to look for. They need to meet all the criteria we talked about, not just some. We'll catch you guys next time.