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LOT 1350
Extremely Rare Vietnam Era Prototype Factory Original German Heckler & Koch
HK223 Selective Fire Rifle, Class III/NFA C&R Fully Transferable Machine Gun - Serial
no. 0242, 223/5.56 mm NATO cal., 16 inch round bbl., matte gray finish, synthetic stock.
Manufactured in 1966 as dated on the left of the magazine well. Offered here is an incredibly
rare example of a registered fully transferable factory original prototype Heckler & Koch
HK223 selective fire rifle, and the only one of its kind ever offered by Rock Island Auction
Company! This HK223 prototype is an evolutionary precursor to what became known as the
HK33, and appears to succeed the T223 prototype machine
guns which were reportedly manufactured in very limited
numbers on license by Harrington & Richardson c. 1965-
1966 as part of a joint effort with Heckler and Koch, with
some sources claiming the Harrington & Richardson T223
prototype was actually manufactured by Heckler and Koch
and imported by Harrington & Richardson for U.S. military
testing purposes. There is a known period advertisement
illustrating the different variants of the early prototypes that
reads “MILITARY WEAPONS SYSTEMS/Design and Fabrication/
Harrington & Richardson, Inc./in association with/HECKLER &
KOCH GMBH”. Some of the T223 prototypes had a bolt hold
open mechanism and release lever built into the front of the
trigger guard, which is not seen in this HK223 prototype, and
would ultimately not be a feature carried into the final design
that became the production HK33. This HK223 prototype
reportedly once belonged to the Harrington & Richardson
factory museum collection, which housed a number of similar
developmental machine guns, in which it would have been brought
into the United States and registered as a Heckler & Koch factory
made fully transferable machine gun prior to changes in import
and registration rules in 1968, making this an incredibly rare bird
and the ultimate desirable Class III item. Harrington & Richardson sold
off its museum collection after the company went bankrupt in the mid-
1980s. This is essentially a scaled down version of the G3, which was chambered for
the larger 7.62 mm NATO (.308), using the roller-delayed blowback mechanism, developed
in response to the introduction of the new 5.56 mm NATO (.223) cartridge. Development of
what ultimately became the HK33 rifle began around c. 1963, with the first prototypes, known
as the T223, completed in 1965. Harrington & Richardson provided a small number of the T223
prototypes for the Small Arms Weapons Systems (SAWS) field experiment tests conducted by
the U.S. Army between 1965-1966. The T223 was compared with the M14, XM16E1, AR-18, M60,
AK47, RPD, DPM, and the modular Stoner 63 machine guns.
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