Winchester Model 68 serial number — why there isn’t one
The Winchester Model 68 is a single-shot, bolt-action .22 rimfire rifle produced from 1934 to 1945, with about 100,000 made.
- Produced:
- 1934–1945
- Action:
- bolt-action
The Model 68 has no serial number
Winchester never numbered the Model 68. 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 68 had been out of production for years. A Model 68 with no number is exactly as it left New Haven. Nothing has been removed.
About 100,000 were made; the references give 98,496 to 100,730.
A Model 67 fitted with a No. 96A aperture rear sight and a No. 97A, later 97B, hooded front sight. The same sights were later offered on the 67, so check the barrel marking rather than the sights to tell them apart. A claim that the first 100 were numbered has no source behind it.
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 68 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 68 without a serial number
Winchester changed the Model 68 over its run, and the published references date some of those changes. Together they bracket when a particular gun was made:
- .22 WRF was added to the chamberings in April 1938.
- The sear and extractor were modified in January 1938.
- Factory scope bases were offered from 1937 to 1939 with the metallic sights retained: a 5x scope was authorized in March 1937, and only the 5x remained by January 1938.
- Finger-groove forearms are early. The references disagree on when they ended: mid-1935 by one account, January 1938 by the Winchester collectors' association's reading of the factory records.
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.