Winchester Model 37 serial number — why there isn’t one
The Winchester Model 37, also known as the "Steelbilt," is a legendary American single-shot shotgun.
- Produced:
- 1936–1963
- Action:
- single-shot
The Model 37 has no serial number
Winchester never numbered the Model 37. Like its other low-priced single-shot .22s and utility shotguns, it left the factory with a model or caliber marking and patent dates on the barrel, but no serial. Federal law did not require serial numbers on rifles and shotguns until the Gun Control Act took effect in December 1968, and by then the Model 37 had been out of production for years. A Model 37 with no number is exactly as it left New Haven. Nothing has been removed.
More than a million were made between 1936 and 1963, by far the most of any gun on this list.
Auction listings that headline a Model 37 as “serial number 1” or “S/N 8” do not show that the factory numbered them. Those are added, assembly or inventory numbers, or misread markings.
The Model 37A and Model 370 of the 1970s are different, Canadian-built guns and do carry serial numbers, with a C prefix.
There is no record to search and no factory letter to order. The Cody Firearms Museum, which issues Winchester factory letters, works from the factory’s serial-number records, and it cannot document a gun that never had a number.
If your Model 37 has a number on it
Numbers do turn up on these guns. Most were added after the gun left the factory: an owner’s identification number, a hardware store’s stock number, or an importer’s marking on a gun that traveled abroad and came back. Some are factory marks that are not serials, such as inspector or fitter stamps and, on several models, a two-digit year stamp hidden under the barrel. Patent dates on the barrel are mistaken for a serial number too. None of these can be looked up in any record.
How to date a Model 37 without a serial number
Winchester changed the Model 37 over its run, and the published references date some of those changes. Together they bracket when a particular gun was made:
- “Red Letter” guns, with WINCHESTER stamped under the receiver and filled with red enamel, are early production from 1936 through about 1948, roughly the first 200,000.
- A plain receiver underside generally means about 1948 to 1963. Missing red paint alone does not prove a late gun: early receivers keep the stamped legend when the enamel wears off.
- The first 1936 guns have a stamped-steel release lever with a folded tang, the “pigtail”.
- The hammer shape and release-lever style changed several times over the run. The references describe the changes but do not put years on them.
- The Boy's Model with its shorter stock was first offered in 1958.
Feature dating gives a window of years, not a date. Parts were used up across changeovers, so a gun can show an older feature later than the reference year.