My tastes have been decidedly European, since they seem to have historically had the most consistently diverse and interesting firearms scene since antiquity.
I have several Swiss rifles (K31's and STGW57, probably a K11 eventually). I'd like to add a centerfire Vetterli at some point, maybe a Swiss Peabody and a service revolver
I have been focusing intentionally on Czech guns since they have the strongest historical record of solid gun designs of practically any nation (need a VZ24 & VZ52 rifle, a little CZ27 pistol, ZK383, BREN 805, ZB39, and to get my ZB37, CZ26, and UK59 kits completed; then I'll probably be happy for a while). CZ52 pistol and a couple VZ58's keep me entertained nicely.
I'm growing my French guns collection, much to my surprise (Mle 1873 revolver, and more recently a Hotchkiss Universal SMG kit and Manhurin MR73 revolver). May have to add the MAS rifles at some point, and eventually a Hotchkiss Portative parts kit
I've got a few Belgian guns (P35 High Power, Lux FN49, and knock-off S&W Model 3). FNH Five-seven sort of counts as a milsurp, being an occasionally issued gun
I've just about got the Italian rifle set for the last century (MP38 kit, BM59, AR70. I really should get a Carcano and an M37 Breda kit, but I have too many cartridges and kits as it is to take on more. A PM12 would be neat to add, too. I'll be skipping the ARX for the time being, until they make the gun nicer)
No Chinese (a Type 56 clone of the Russian KPV kit sorta/kinda counts), no Japanese, and a smattering of other random kits (Madsen/Danish, M76/Yugo, DP28/Russian-Polish, PPSH41/Russian-Polish, BREN/English-Czech, SKS/Russian, Suomi/Finnish, Steyr-Hahn/Austria-Hungarian, MP34/Austrian, Swedish K/Swedish, G36/German). The comm bloc nations were so communal (go figure) that I'm not inclined to do much other than lump them into a single nation category; instead, I group them by the various designer/mechanical cliques that came into prominence (Degtyerev, Goryunov, Simonov, Shpagin, Kalashnikov, Vladimirov, Dragunov...Sokolov would be cool, but I doubt we'll see NSV kits anytime soon at the rate things are going)
Tell the truth, the closest thing to "logic" driving my collecting is lineage. I find a gun whose mechanical design I like, and I research what it was derived or inspired from, or what contemporaries it was competing with (like how the Madsen LMG shares a lot of traits with the Martini single shot, but is otherwise an island unto itself, yet still managed to compete directly with the BAR and BREN for decades. By contrast, the UK59 is a culmination of nearly a century of Czech weapons development, starting with the ZB37, progressing through the BREN, then wedding it's receiver layout VZ58 to make the UK59 universal belt fed). Sort of a "Wiki-walk" but for guns. It will probably make writing history and design books on them easier if I ever get to that point in life
. Mostly they serve as inspiration for designs of my own that I want to build one day, so it helps to have as many jumping off points as possible.
TCB
I really need to buy some modern American rifles, simply because -no joke- my go to guns at this point are the STGW57 and VZ58. Maybe the AR70 and K31 as the runners up. I have complete faith they'd be reliable and all (because they are), but technology has progressed since the 1950's, so there's probably more practical options out there...
