Winchester Model 67 serial number — why there isn’t one
The Winchester Model 67 is a single-shot, bolt-action .22 rimfire rifle produced from 1934 to 1963.
- Produced:
- 1934–1963
- Action:
- bolt-action
The Model 67 has no serial number
Winchester did not number the Model 67 for the home market; some rifles built for export were numbered, and British wartime purchases carry proof and broad-arrow marks. 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 67 had been out of production for years. A Model 67 with no number is exactly as it left New Haven. Nothing has been removed.
The references disagree on the total, from about 384,000 to more than 650,000. None were made from 1943 to 1945.
Evolved from the Model 60 and, fitted with target sights, sold as the Model 68.
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 67 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 67 without a serial number
Winchester changed the Model 67 over its run, and the published references date some of those changes. Together they bracket when a particular gun was made:
- Finger grooves in the forearm are an early feature, continuing into early 1938 and longer on rifles with both open and peep sights.
- The smoothbore version was offered from September 1936, and the Miniature Target Bore with a 24-inch smoothbore barrel from April 1940.
- The Junior, or Boy's, Rifle with a 20-inch barrel dates from 1937.
- Factory-scoped rifles have the WP proof relocated low and left: the scope-only Model 677, marked Model 67, from January 1937, and the standard 67 with see-through bases from March 1937. The proof mark itself is not a date code.
- Model 68-style aperture and hooded sights were an option from 1944.
- Barrels marked Model 67A are from the June 1949 update, which changed the extractor spring and the barrel stud. 67A production ran 1949 to 1963.
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.