Marlin Serial Number Mystery In Marlin Collector

[Regnier (gunrunner)]

Allen;

I think I need to clarify something I said about the substitution on the Model '97's by the Marlin Arms Corporation. It is not that they would not make the gun, if it was that under normal circumstances, they would get the gun out in a week to 10 days. But with the war effort, they offered to send a similar gun (not quite what the customer ordered) that was in inventory as they just did not know when they could make the gun and ship it to the customer. So, they knew they had times when they would assemble sporting arms, but not exactly when the extra time would be to suit the customer.

[Parley Baer]

Rick, that makes sense to me. I have been looking at the other lines of Marlin Firearms such as the pump action rifles and shotguns trying to see if there is a pattern in the serial numbers regarding the start of the letter prefix. The only thing consistant is the A prefix. No other letters are used. It does look like the shotguns were both mixed with other shotguns and with some having their own serial number ranges.

Not sure on the pump action rifles. But one thing that does appear apparent is that the letter prefixes are closer to say 1915 than 1910. There were a couple of shotguns that might have penned it down more but Brophy does not give any serial numbers for them. They were only made during the key time frame we are looking at.

The only conclusion is there was a lot more activity going on during the war years than one would have thought.

[Regnier (gunrunner)]

Allen;

When looking at the shotgun serial numbers, we see that the Marlin catalogs mention that there were "over 150,000" of them made between 1898 and 1915. When we look at the high serial numbers Brophy lists in his book for the pre-1916 models, the high numbers he observed were in the 148,000 to 149,000 range. I would like to know if anyone out there has any exposed hammer shotguns above the 150,000 serial numbers. These numbers he listed were the exposed hammer, pump action shotguns. He does not show any high numbers for the pre-1916 hammerless shotguns. So, this would make sense that the "A" prefix shotguns are post 1916, just like the "A" prefix on the lever guns.
The pump action rifles is something else to look into. I have a Model 38 with an "A" prefix to the serial number but has a Marlin Firearms Corporation barrel. How does that worK???
I think for now, I will let someone else work on that subject.

[Parley Baer]

Brophy shows the Model 38 with digit only, A and D prefix serial numbers so that would appear to be correct. In my meager list of Model 38's most have the A prefix. My Model 32 has a Corporation barrel and obviously was made from left over parts sometime after 1921. By the way the Model 32 was supposedly short lived because of the need for war production capacity. I always have an eye out for high serial numbers and will look for high numbers in regard to the hammer shotgun.

It appears that both the Model 38 and 39 started out with digit serial number and then progressed to letter prefixes. If that is true with the Model 93 then the star and bullseye started our right away with the Corporation and we are well on the way to guessing when these guns were made.