Kinda hints to the cost of making an AK  doesn't it. Were those the fugly hunting stock Saigas ,without pistolgrips ,with 5rd mags, fixed birdcage muzzle device and more sporting looking furniture as in those days that was what we in Eu know a B4 category , we had those in the shops as well they were 50-80$ cheaper than the  AK100 series looking clones with folding stocks  and semi proper looking muzzle brakes .

Nowadays Saigas are still on the market here but as they go trough sanction busting network of dealers they now cost closer to 1500$ .Which is a shame as i would love one of those 9mm SAIGA-9 Vitjaz clones  but at these prices there is always Scorpion Evo 

*not a Kalashnikov concern project

Folks in Russia are tinkering around some interesting concepts 

YouTube

SAG Multicaliber Carbine prototype / test mule

Our try on AK/AR18 hubrid continues. AK bolt with AK carrier modified to work with short-stroke piston. upper/lower recievers and AK trigger.

One of the odd things about that Saiga is that the chamber has a stepped neck.  After firing, the first half of the neck is a larger diameter than the last.  I have never tried to reuse brass, but I doubt that it would resize properly.  

... in a conversation about military rifles you bring up saiga's of all things as a comparator for the right around $650 DOD price for m4a1's.

Meanwhile the Russian MOD is paying anywhere between $1000 & $1200 each for ak12's and 15's.

Also meanwhile before the current gun panic here in the US it was downright easy to scoop up a quite nice m4 alike with FNMI made barrels that AT WORST would crank out 2 moa at absolute worst with anything approaching decent ammo for right around $400.

But then again, not being laughably intellectually dishonest, I wouldn't bring up the prices of civilian rifles in a discussion about military firearms because they're irrelevant. (And I'm not habitually intellectually dishonest)

So you spent an entire post trying to "win" an argument by moving the goalposts and being intellectually dishonest because that's what you do.

Meanwhile all the rest of us are over here in the land of people who want to have honest discussions and learn about a topic we're excited by.

It must really suck to be such a miserable elitist self inflated frustrated egotist who is constantly corrected  and upstaged by happy enthusiasts from America who you look down on and loathe so intensely that you genuinely can't hide it.

Pro tip: Stop being so mad about people "not recognizing your brilliance" and refusing to defer to you because you're some sort of professional.

When you're wrong you're wrong. When you're a prick about it constantly it just makes it even more fun to poke you with a stick.

You get mercilessly corrected because you're nowhere near as knowledgeable as a bunch of hobbyists who do this stuff because they love it and are frankly disgusted by the behavior and attitudes of people like you who are all over this industry.

Your kind are 100% the single biggest reason why no innovation and technological progress is being made in this industry when there are entire new vistas that should be being explored and better products made as a result.

If you actually want respect, do something worth respecting and stop pretending that you're the be all end all.

You're not

No it really doesn't hint to the cost lmao...

You are worse at economics than you are at guns.

It was is and has been well known from the time when $199 saiga's flowed like water that they were making guns at steep losses to keep the people working and the factories from closing.

This is like saying m4's really only cost $200 because for about two years in the period between 2017 and 2019 you could fairly easily cobble together a parts bin AR for that price...

What happened there?

The market corrected a bunch of bad manufacturers could no longer sell at a loss and quite a few AR companies shut their doors / started machining products they could actually make money of off with their production equipment.

Meanwhile in Russia, companies like KC etc are only really semi private and are propped up by the Russian government when they need to because they're considered strategic production infrastructure

Saigas have kinda always been a bit dodgy, made moreso by legislation that required them to be progressively more and more reworked and nonstandard in order to be exported to various countries.

I don't recall ever having any major problems with them though unlike guns from Royal tigers in-house brand century and etc.

I miss those days when you could buy 3 of them and all the parts to un neuter them for under a grand and have an unending stream of build projects that didn't blow the budget

I had wondered why the Saiga's of the early 2000's were so inexpensive.  I had expected a piece of junk, but it was generally well made.   I have read that the stepped neck was used in civilian models only, in order to delineate between true civilian and stolen military weapons.  I don't know if that is really true, though.

They were about $350-$400 retail in CA circa 2009.

Of course, this time last year (pre-panic) entry level AR's were available for $400-$450. 

It didn't hurt that the European AK makers had currency problems, either. I heard a big reason for the price increase on the ROMAKs was joining the Eurozone. A $350 rulebeater would make a great truck/tractor gun.

End of the day Saiga is what you can get as a civilian from the same production line with minimal construction changes.So is more relevant than your random Ar parts you could find around various vendors.  Even if they were selling at the loss AK did not come to 100mio copies by being expensive to make. As far as i follow the Russian MIC and how they finance the losses is generally by state-owned banks writing off loans. 

If you follow the sales MIC makes. MOD purchases keep the lines running but are not that profitable. foreign sales are the moneymakers and everything costs way more than MOD is paying.

Saiga M3 EXP01 costs cca 330$ , sporter model like on the pic above cca 260$ , TR3 = AK12 clone cca 760$ on Russian market i guess it's all just to keep employees working while losing money.The private 49% stakeholder must be thrilled. 

I am not aware of the contract value for 150.000 AK12/15  they are delivering but have doubts they are paying 1000$ a piece for them and selling for 760$ MSRP(Kalashnikov Web shop) to Civilians .

AK prices going UP in eastern Europe, besides Russian guns taken of the market, has a lot to do with the arms buying spree to arm the 'moderate beheaders' in Syria and various factions in other ME wars

to the best of my knowledge Russian MoD pays close to US $1000 for an AK-12 with spare mags, sling and cleaning kit

also my estimate is that gov't purchasing prices for mass-produced small arms which are also available as civilian rifles (AK/Saiga, Vityaz/Saiga-9 etc) are about 20-30% below MSRP.