This rifle is a very scarce example of an early pre-war Czechoslovakian ZH-29 semi-automatic rifle that was designed by Emanuel Holek in 1929. This was the second semi-automatic rifle designed by the BRNO factory in Czechoslovakia and was one of the very first fully successful production semi-automatic rifles marketed in the world. Prior to WWII, these rifles were demonstrated and sold to several countries in Europe and the Far East with several examples purchased by the Japanese prior to WWII. A similar versions was actually built by the Japanese and tested in their 1935 Test Trials. This example is very unique in that it has gas-operating mechanism, and the bolt/locking system very similar to the Belgium FN-FAL rifle only it's mounted on the right side of the action instead on directly on top. The rifle used 100% machined parts that were held to close tolerances with final hand fitting, polishing and bluing. The action is also designed to be disassembled using only the tip of a bullet as all the major takedown pins are non-tapered, and two large pins hold the upper and lower receiver groups together making field disassembly very easy. During firing, the rear of the breech bolt actually cams/slides to the right after firing to unlock and eject a spent cartridge and then when in the loading cycles the bolt/operating rod moves forward and the rear of the bolt cams back to the left to lock the bolt in place in the receiver. The left side of the receiver is marked "CESKOSLOVENSKA ZBROJOVKA, AKCIOVA, SPOLECNOST, BRNO", and the heel of the receiver is marked with serial number "11006" over "Automaticka Puska" over "Z37". The top rear and right sides have a single "E3/Standing Lion/37" proof mark. It has a two piece stock assembly with a short buttstock mounted on the rear of the receiver with two short handguards in front of the receiver with a unique, one-piece finned, aluminum cooling/gas block in front of the wooden handguards. The barrel is fitted with a fixed front sight with a fully adjustable military style tangent rear sight. It comes with one original five round box magazine.

Very fine with 90% of the blue finish overall, thinning on the edge and high spots overall. The stock and handguards are both in very fine condition with a nice matching darker brown color overall showing minor handling marks and light pressure dents on the sides. Mechanically excellent