I have a new Zastava EZ9 and like it. The ambi decocker is nice but makes finding a holster tricky. Fit/finish a little rough in parts but is a service pistol, so that doesn’t bother me. Well worth the price. I also have the other variants; CZ99, 999.
I think the best compromise to this is to leave mags loaded and switch out quarterly. That way they're loaded and ready but those worried about compression should have their minds eased.
Yeah, anything cheaper and you're looking at flats (or a lucky forum buy).. Childers and Recreator for the win. 80% are the way to go if you have the tooling.
I was thinking of the yellow plastic Finnish blanks; most blanks are crimped although those plastic ones were not. I think the others may be right. The head stamp seems to line up w/ Chinese and may be tracers.
It's one of the cleaner ones I've seen, some minor scuffing on metal but nothing serious. No refinishing of wood was done. The buttstock has the famous dry spot on the bottom due to the rubber butt pad but I am going to leave it be.
My 1989 Yugo M59/66 SKS and accessories. Not as many were made with tritium night sights, most were painted phosphorus paint. I went ahead and replaced them.
... as for refinishing, I am a fan of not doing so. If it were mine I'd simply degrease using odorless Mineral Spirits and maybe leave the wood in a black trashbag in the sun to leach out the cosmoline.
As for your Albanian question; even though these are Chinese the batches I've seen lately have been used in Albania. All trenchart I have seen from the PSA ones have Albanian script. I think that holds true to Classic's too.
And yes, there are Albanian SKS's too but are less common.