Doing some research on a gun I am purchasing and noticed in the W&C Scott History that there is an anomaly in the early numbers I hadn't noticed. Numbers 1 to 1000 are the 1865-1868 guns. The 1000-2000 numbers are the 1868-1871 guns. They then start single year assignments so that 2000-3000 are all 1871. However, the numbers starting at 10,000 have different starting dates. 10,000 -11,000 are 1878, but the 11,000 are 1866, 12,000 are 1867-1868 etc. This continues through the 20,000 numbers and then becomes sequential through 1896.
For instance, an 1871 gun could have a 2000 number or a 15000 number, an 1876 gun could have a 7000 or a 21000 number, etc.
Does anyone know the reason for this? Were different ranges assigned to guns according to grade, proof house or something else? Proofhouse might make sense, but they generally offered three grades not two. One possibility would be that the base grades had one series and the A and Bgrades another. American makers had systems like this depending on gauge, model etc, but I have never seen this mentioned pertaining to Scott.
Last edited by AGS; 04/15/24 01:44 PM.
