Winchester Model 60A serial number — why there isn’t one
The Winchester Model 60A is a single-shot, bolt-action .22 rimfire rifle.
- Produced:
- Model 60A: 1932–1934; Model 60A Target: 1933–1939 (WACA/Watrous chronology; Proofhouse instead dates both 60/60A categories from 1932 to World War II)
- Action:
- bolt-action
The Model 60A has no serial number
Winchester never numbered the Model 60A. 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 60A had been out of production for years. A Model 60A with no number is exactly as it left New Haven. Nothing has been removed.
Winchester's figures give 165,754 Model 60 and 60A rifles combined and 6,118 60A Targets; Madis's table gives 165,758 and 6,363.
The Model 60A is the revised standard rifle of 1932 to 1934 and, separately, the 60A Target made to 1939 with a 27-inch barrel, a square-top military-style front sight and a Lyman 55W receiver sight. The Target is .22 Long Rifle only. The standard 60A was dropped in 1934 when the Model 67 appeared.
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 60A 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 60A without a serial number
Winchester changed the Model 60A over its run, and the published references date some of those changes. Together they bracket when a particular gun was made:
- Standard 60A rifles came with 23- and 27-inch barrels; the 27-inch barrel arrived in 1933.
- Some barrels carry a two-digit year stamp on their underside, hidden by the stock. It dates the barrel, not the finished rifle: Winchester did not use parts up in the order they were made.
- A chrome-plated bolt and trigger were fitted to ordinary Model 60s too, so plating does not mark a Target.
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.