January 15, 1941

[RCS]

On January 15, 1941 this Winchester receiver had the serial number 100931 stamped (Canfield's book page 238)

[Jersey Devil]

Love it!!!

[m14brian]

That's pretty!
m14brian

[Bodyman]

This got me wondering so I finally looked it up; you guys have seen it before, but from the polishing charts in Canfield's book this was polished on, or prior to, November 28th, 1940.



Of the first 500 serial numbers Mac had around 50 of them in his data that had turned up, or about 10% of them. I use that as a rough rate of survival for the earliest receivers and from what I can tell it holds true for early SA too; we see about 10% of them today (as opposed to Singer 1911A1's where we have something like 300% of them, ... hrumph). I think there was even a consecutive pair of Winchesters in the first 100 in Mac's data. This was the 8th earliest Winchester serial number that Mac had on his list.

[Bodyman]

The Winchester data in Canfield is odd at the other end of production, though. For the end of production, it lists numbers well into the 1,642,xxx range but the highest that has been seen so far is only a few hundred into the 1,640,xxx's. Odd enough, but so far I think only 3 or 4 of those have been found that are above 1,640,000 (with the highest number at I think, 1,640,304?). Did Winchester pull a fast one when Ordnance wasn't looking and bill for a few thousand extras? Were those last few thousand all destroyed for some reason? Or are they all sitting in crates next all the IHC's that we sent to the Shah of Iran, that John Robertson got to see and handle, or are they somewhere else, just waiting for us to find them? I don't know. It is just one more of the many questions we have on these things.

But isn't it cool how these old hunks of wood and metal tie together with, ... everything, ...

Miss talking with you, John. Say 'hello' for us to **** Culver (really, I have to write 'Richard'?) and all the other great warriors up there in Valhalla.