Winchester Model 58 serial number — why there isn’t one
The Winchester Model 58 is a single-shot bolt-action boy's rifle, a cost-reduced Model 1902 made from 1928 to the early 1930s, with about 39,000 to 40,000 produced.
- Produced:
- 1928–1931 (Madis: to 1934)
- Action:
- bolt-action
The Model 58 has no serial number
Winchester never numbered the Model 58. 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 58 had been out of production for years. A Model 58 with no number is exactly as it left New Haven. Nothing has been removed.
About 39,000 to 40,000 were made.
A cost-reduced Model 1902 with a gumwood stock and no buttplate. Inspector or fitter marks found on some examples are not serial numbers.
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 58 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 58 without a serial number
Winchester changed the Model 58 over its run, and the published references date some of those changes. Together they bracket when a particular gun was made:
- The August 29 date on the barrel is a patent date, not a year of manufacture.
- A two-digit year stamp has been reported on the underside of the barrel next to the receiver (“28” on one example). It dates the barrel, not necessarily the finished rifle.
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.