The WASR price hikes have nothing to do with MA... it's the same industry wide. The "MA price premium thing" is largely a myth. It only applies to things like preban rifles and some handgun compliance BS (eg, like the overpriced 3rd gen glocks you see in every MA gun store) but even in those forms it's still mostly a lie/myth.
-Mike
This. WASRs prices went up immediately after the ATF dinged CAI on a giant shipment of rifles. For reasons that can only be linked to the ATF being a bunch of flaming a**h***s, they "decided" one day to order CAI, or their importer (I am not sure) to chop all of the barrels of an imported stock.
They were deemed "machine gun barrels."
This is the same jackassery that got parts kits FUBAR'd- if the barrel was on a military rifle, or intended to go onto one, it's deemed a machine gun by our lovely ass clowns at the ATF.
So, somehow, someway, Cugir got it through to the ATF that their new shipments now have barrels meant for civilian usage. So now CAI WASRs have their lovely hammer forged romanian barrels again.
Anyways, the point I'm trying to make here is that the price hikes happened right after this batch of rifles got destroyed. Why would this happen? Well, let's say you're an importer and you make a living off of importing these rifles. One day, a large shipment of yours gets confiscated by a pack of baboons and they decide to dry hump the shit out of all of the rifles to the point of you having to chop them up into pieces and sell them for pennies on the dollar as parts kits.
What are you going to do about this?
You're going to raise prices so you get a better margin on your next shipment to 1) cover the money you lost to the homosexual horny baboons and 2) insure your ass for possible homo baboon attacks.
This is also when Apex got an ass load of barrel-less romy AK parts kits- some very fine examples... I'm not sure if this coincides with any sort of connection or not, but I'm sure it does- they were the typical parts that you'd find on a century "oxided" WASR. But I could be wrong here
Your story about Libya is bullshit.