Winchester Model 47 serial number — why there isn’t one
The Winchester Model 47 is a single-shot bolt-action .22 rimfire rifle manufactured from 1949 to 1954.
- Produced:
- 1949–1954
- Action:
- bolt-action
The Model 47 has no serial number
Winchester never numbered the Model 47. 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 47 had been out of production for years. A Model 47 with no number is exactly as it left New Haven. Nothing has been removed.
Production passed about 43,000 rifles, a Madis estimate that is sometimes misread as a serial count.
A single-shot bolt-action .22 chambered for Short, Long and Long Rifle, made 1949 to 1954. Most examples also lack a barrel date, so dating is approximate at best.
The collectors' association records production differences, none of them dated: blued versus chrome-plated bolts, smooth versus serrated triggers, straight versus swept bolt handles, different stock lengths, and different sights. The peep-sighted version, catalog G4701R with an 80A receiver sight and 97B hooded front, was a factory option; Winchester did not call it a Target model.
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 47 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 47 without a serial number
Only the production years, 1949–1954, place this model in time. No dated feature changes are documented well enough for us to publish, so we do not.