That would always be an option.  With the prong buttplate it would probably not be my go to bench gun though.

Of my 19 Winchester high and low walls, my 32-20 low wall is the closest to being original with just the addition of scope blocks. At the Post Falls show the first rifle I looked at was claimed by the seller to be all original. It must have been very rare version then with its Bishop buttstock and rubber butt pad. He wanted $2K for it.  Mine is not really all original as the barrel and lower tang were sold to someone very early on and added to the receiver as far as we can tell. Still the barrel looks to have been made prior to 1909 based on its marks.

I should have recognized the Catholic Church marks on the barrel. Dang.

After the passage of the 1938 firearms act, I doubt Winchester would have been selling unserialized lower tangs.  Old-Win stated that the barrel marking of O.F. was superseded in 1913 with a P in a circle for barrels sold separately.  I suppose I could get the buttstock carbon dated    

When I was discussing having to do ATF paperwork for a high wall with no Winchester name on the upper tang, the local dealer said they routinely did paperwork for rifles with no serial number.  My highwall had a number but the AFT form listed it as 'unknown manufacturer, unknown model" even though the Cabelas' receipt said Winchester high wall.

My 25 Hornet that I got from Bob Zimmerman's estate has an ATF xxxxx serial number on the upper tang that I am sure Bob had added to the non-serialized rifle that was bulit by Ron Smith.  I asked Ron about it and he said that he would not have had it added to cross the border.

Jack

The fact that Winchester did not serialized the receivers is why Campbell said it was hard to date them due to lots of tang swapping.  With the only number being a 4 digit one on the stock under the buttplate, I can't even get a Cody letter.
It would be nice to have al the records in a spreadsheet so I could check all the models ending in the 4 digit number I have to see which ones were possibles.

Where is Mr Peabody and his WABAC machine when you need him.

Jack

gunlaker wrote on Jul 14^th, 2025 at 8:40pm:


Good luck with getting Bert H. to help with this. I had a Special Sporting High Wall in .32-40 with a lot of deluxe features, but someone broke the lower tang and repaired it with a nice tig weld, but lost part of the serial number. I asked Bert if I gave him all the features, and the job number off the left side of the tangs if he might sometime peruse the records and maybe stumble across my rifle and write down the serial number?
He said he spends a week every year going through all the 1885 records, but didn't have time or the inclination to watch for my 1885 while going through the records.

I am afraid we will never see such records in the public domain as long as it is a money maker for the Cody Museum.  I don’t fault them for providing that service but I am sure they wouldn’t want to do a complicated search. 

Jack