Look for a WASR-10, Romanian will do. The wood sucks on them but you can change the furniture out fairly cheap. The internals are pretty solid.

Oh shut up.

And I'll second the Romanian WASR-10

AK's suck ass. Buy a real gun. You can get s&w mp15's for like 600 bucks

I have a super early Chinese SKS make at the famous Factory 26. Paid $300 for it and it is phenomenal. I've got over 2k rounds through it with absolutely no issues.

LOVE that gun.

Mini 14 is my favorite rifle. The 7.62 is the Mini 30

Under 700....

I was in the market for an AK about a year ago but just couldn't bring myself to drop the cash for something I was only going to use a hand full of times. One name that kept popping up on the gun forums I was looking for information was Arsenal.</br></br>Check 'em out: http://www.arsenalinc.com/usa/Rifles/

you could always consider a Mini-30 as an AK alternate as well. Love mine. Have that and a mini-14, both are reliable guns.

Some pretty good advice here. I like Mini 14/Mini 30s, YMMV - the 14 shoots the .223 (same as the AR) the Mini 30 shoots the Russian short round, same as the AK/SKS.

If you're really interested in an AK, the folks @ Arsenal are worth your time. Not the cheapest but a good product. I'd stay away from anything imported via Century Arms - way too many bad reports keep popping up.

The SKS was adopted before the AK hit the scene in Rooshia, but not by much. The Russians adopted the AK 47 for their front line combat troops and gave the SKS guns to cops, 'frontier hunters' and so on. Russia soon gave the equipment to make the SKS guns away to allies like Yugoslavia, China, etc...the Russian SKS is worth looking for over some of the others - the Chinese models are 'rode hard and put up wet', the Yugos didn't have access to chrome and their barrels wear out/wore out sooner. For my purposes the SKS was a nicer hunting rifle - good for deer-sized game. I had a clean Yugo SKS I just sold off a few weeks ago. I'll try to wave and point around here when I have stuff to sell, the stuff I sold went so fast I didn't get to use all my marketing whammy. Which probably means I didn't price it high enough. But here's a tip for you kids - buy guns cheap when gun loving Republicans are in charge, sell guns when Democrats are making noises about taking away your guns. I picked up some tidy profit following that plan, and I'm not done yet.

Here's a place that sells a lot of these kinds of guns, should give you a chance to price stuff before you hit a gun show/gun store. I've bought guns from them before and was happy w/their service & product. http://www.atlanticfirearms.com/

I've got a Norinco SKS that I love to shoot. That is one of the most fun guns you can buy. Steel cased 7.62x39 is still pretty cheap too.

http://i63.tinypic.com/sqtw5j.jpg

The rifle on the bottom is my brush rifle that I've used for most of my deer hunting.
All told I've got less than $250 into it but I also started with a pre-Clinton ban Norinco SKS that I paid $60 for.

Wish you had posted this a month ago.


I just sold three of them. All under 500 bucks.

One had a stain on the stock and I sold it for 300.


Just had way too many.

Get a Verp or a Tula.

Better yet. Before you buy an AK at least go handle a Ruger mini 30. Shoots the same round as the AK.