Madis vs. factory dates · why the sources disagree
Madis vs. factory dates
Ask two references what year a Winchester was made, and sometimes both are right — about different events. The factory records are the day-by-day ledgers; George Madis’s tables are the collector standard, compiled decades later. For most serial numbers they agree. For some they are years apart, and this page lists every model where that happens, with one real serial number from each.
The two records, in one paragraph each
The factory records. Clerks in Winchester’s Polishing Room logged the day each serial number was applied — month, day, and year, gun by gun. Those ledgers survive, and the Cody Firearms Museum holds them. Where a model’s records survive, this site treats them as the record.
Madis’s tables. George Madis published The Winchester Book in the early 1960s and the Winchester Handbook after. His year-by-year tables estimate where each year’s production ended, compiled decades after the guns shipped from factory sources and interviews — not transcriptions of the ledgers.
There is a third list, typed by Winchester’s own customer-service desk, that mixes real records with arithmetic. Who was Madis? What does Cody hold?
Where they disagree, model by model
27 models on this site have at least one serial number the sources put in different years. Each row is a real serial number from a disagreed range, looked up in every source that model’s page carries:
| Model | At serial | The sources say |
|---|---|---|
| Model 12 | 32,419 | The sources disagree: 1914 (Madis) or 1913 (factory records). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 24 | 27,046 | The sources disagree: 1942 (Winchester's list, Winchester's list) or 1941 (Madis, Madis). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 42 | 13,964 | The sources disagree: 1939 (Madis, Winchester's list) or 1934 (Madis) or 1935 (Winchester's list). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 43 | 1 | The sources disagree: 1948 (factory records) or 1949–1957 (Madis). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 50 | 196,400 | The sources disagree: 1962 (Madis via Proofhouse) or 1961 (Winchester's list). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 54 | 49,939 | The sources disagree: 1937 (Madis via the collectors' association) or 1936 (Winchester's list). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 55 | 10,472 | The sources disagree: 1924–1928 (factory records) or 1929 (Madis via Proofhouse, Winchester's list). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 61 | 1 | The sources disagree: 1932 (Madis, Winchester's list) or 1949 (collectors' association). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 62 and 62A | 158,645 | The sources disagree: 1945 (Madis) or 1943 (Madis). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 63 | 53,854 | The sources disagree: 1946 (Madis, Madis via Proofhouse, Winchester's list) or 1942 (factory records). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 64 | 1,112,195 | The sources disagree: 1937 (Madis) or 1940 (Winchester's list). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 70 | 957,996 | The sources disagree: 1975 (Winchester's list) or 1971 (Winchester's list). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 71 | 7,817 | The sources disagree: 1935–1958 (Overall accepted serial range) or 1937 (Madis) or 1936 (factory records, Winchester's list). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 75 | 88,715 | The sources disagree: 1958 (Madis) or 1959 (factory records). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 1873 | 1 | The sources disagree: 1873 (Madis, Winchester's list) or 1898 (factory records, factory records). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 1885 | 1 | The sources disagree: 1885 (Madis, Madis, Winchester's list) or 1920 (Madis) or 1898 (factory records). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 1886 | 1 | The sources disagree: 1886 (Madis, Winchester's list) or 1898 (factory records). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 1887 | 1 | The sources disagree: 1887 (Madis, Winchester's list) or 1898 (factory records). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 1890 | 1 | The sources disagree: 1890 (Madis) or 1898 (Madis, factory records). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 1892 | 7,122 | The sources disagree: 1893 (factory records) or 1892 (Madis, Winchester's list). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 1894 | 14,760 | The sources disagree: 1895 (Madis, Winchester's list) or 1896 (factory records). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 1895 | 31,585 | The sources disagree: 1902 (Madis, Winchester's list) or 1901 (factory records). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 1895 Lee Navy | 15,001 | The sources disagree: 1898 (factory records) or 1908 (Madis). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 1897 | 32,336 | The sources disagree: 1898 (Madis, Winchester's list) or 1897 (factory records). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 1903 | 6,291 | The sources disagree: 1903–1932 (factory records) or 1903 (auction letters) or 1910 (Winchester's list) or 1903–1904 (Winchester's list). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Model 1906 | 89,148 | The sources disagree: 1908 (Madis, Winchester's list) or 1907 (factory records). Read why below before relying on either. |
| Models 1905 and 1910 | 5,659 | The sources disagree: 1905 (Winchester's list, Madis via Proofhouse) or 1905–1920 (factory records) or 1911 (Winchester's list) or 1911–1915 (Madis via Proofhouse). Read why below before relying on either. |
Look up your own serial on a model page and it shows every source’s answer for your number, side by side. One example per model here; a model’s page flags every range where its tables differ.
The famous case: the Model 1894 and the pre-1899 line
US federal law treats guns made before 1899 as antiques, and the two records part ways exactly at the end of 1898. Madis ends the year at serial 147,684; the factory ledgers end it at 53,941. Nearly 94,000 rifles are antiques by one table and not by the other. The Model 1894 page works through that case, and the pre-1899 cutoff page draws the line for every pre-1900 model.
For a specific gun, a factory letter from the Cody Firearms Records Office settles it.
Which one should you use?
Where the factory records survive, use them — they are the ledger itself. Where they do not, Madis’s tables and the other collector references are what remains: useful estimates, strongest where later records confirm them. What this site never does is average the two. A lookup here shows each source’s answer side by side and tells you when they differ.
And a serial table dates the day a gun was numbered, not the day it shipped — we measured that gap from the factory letters. Date a gun by its number, and reach for the letter when the exact day matters.
Questions
Which is more accurate — Madis's tables or the factory records?
For serial numbers the factory records cover, the factory records: they are the ledgers themselves. Madis's tables are estimates compiled decades later, and they matter most for models and years where no factory records survive. When the two disagree for a serial, the model's page shows both answers side by side and says which source is which.
Why do the sources disagree by years and not just months?
Madis estimated how much was made each year and worked out where one year's serials ended; the ledgers recorded each gun as it was numbered. Where his estimate was off, the boundary between two years moves by whatever was made in between — for the Model 1894's end of 1898, that is nearly 94,000 rifles.
How do I check which year applies to my serial number?
Look it up on its model page: every source's answer appears side by side, and disagreements are flagged. If the exact date matters — the pre-1899 antique line most famously — a factory letter from the Cody Firearms Records Office is the way to settle it.