Hi BB-

I’m afraid it won’t be much help, but the earliest SG that I have recorded thus far is S/N 19.   It goes against the popular wisdom that the first 100 or so M70s were all 30 GOV’T’06 standard rifles, but the gun does have all the correct early SG parts.  Of course, the fact that the first 100 were standard rifles also does not mean that the first 100 rifles assembled were S/Ns 1 thru 100.

Do you have any back story on your rifle?  If you could post a few photos we could at least tell you whether it has the parts one would expect on a 1936 SG.  As a guest you’d need to link photos via a third party host or e-mail them to me ([email protected]) to post for you.

Best of Luck!!! 

Lou 

** SORRY… If anybody saw this post in the first few minutes after I uploaded it, I initially said S/N 17, which was a miss recollection on my part. S/N 17 is a 30 GOV’T’06 standard rifle pictured in Dean Whitaker’s book.  I meant to say S/N 19…

Hi Clarence-

I honestly don’t know.  The rifle isn’t mine, but I have seen it first hand and it looks OK to me.  Of course it could be a non-factory upgrade, but if it is they used the correct parts, such as the stock with the front sling swivel base up close to the fore end tip that you most commonly see in SG rifle made before 1938.  Plausible?  Yes.  Proveable?  Nope. You’d have to examine it and make up your own mind. 

BTW… Not wanting to divert this thread from the OP’s question… But…  You’ve seen a lot of M70s (even if you did rush past them so fast in the NRA Museum that you didn’t notice)… 

Have you ever seen a regular production pre-war M70 SG with the “extra fish tail” pistol grip checkering?  Yes, the 1937 Introductory (green) brochure pictures the SG that way and Rule’s book says they were made like that in 1937.  But even the earliest SG pictured in his book doesn’t have it and I’ve yet to see it on any of the 1936-37 SG rifles I’ve run across.  The only SG rifles I’ve seen with that pattern are somewhat later pre-war rifles made during the time that the “deluxe” pistol grip checkering was a cataloged extra cost option.  And those rifles have other special order features, like select walnut, leading me to think the fancier checkering was ordered.

If anyone has a 1936-37 SG with that grip checkering pattern I’d love to see photos of it…

Best,

Lou

All-

In the interest of trying to give a partial answer to the OP’s original question about pre-war SG serial numbers, I’m attaching below the interim results of a sub-survey I’ve been working on.  It’s a “screen shot” from an Excel spreadsheet, so I hope it’s legible:

This sub-survey has been intended to answer a different question, namely when did Winchester change the position of the front sling swivel base on Super Grades from this:

To this:

The spreadsheet does not include all the cloverleaf tang (type I and II) M70 Super Grade serial numbers I’ve recorded, only those where I was clever enough to remember to record where the front swivel was placed.  I also cannot vouch for the authenticity of all these rifles, since most were recorded from on-line sources.  But it does give the S/Ns about about 150 early M70 SG rifles.  Assuming that the sample is random, it suggests that very few Super Grade rifles were made before around S/N 2000.  So the OP’s rifle, if legit, would indeed be a very early one.

Hopefully BB is still checking in b/c I’d like to see some photos of the rifle in question.

As for the question the survey is supposed to answer, it looks to me like the change in swivel position begins to appear in late 1937 to early 1938, after which there’s about a two-year overlap period where either might occur.  Presumably this reflects the time it took to use up existing stores of the older stocks.  On a survey of this type we expect “outliers” due to subsequent “upgrading” or the occasional assembly of early S/N receiver at a later date, but I would tend to question the authenticity of a pre-64 M70 Super Grade with a S/N below about 12,000 that had the later style stock.

Best,

Lou

BB-

Unfortunately the factory production records you seek were destroyed long ago.  The anecdotal observations of collectors are all there is to go on.  I cannot even assure you that the two earlier S/Ns I’ve observed in SG style (S/Ns 19 and 123) were in fact “Super Grades” when they left the factory, as opposed to havng been “upgraded” at some later date.  Same thing goes for the rifle you’d like to establish as “The World’s First M70 Super Grade”.  Without the non-existent factory records or some unshakable chain of custody from 1937 to the present (documented provenance), you cannot know that is a “genuine” Super Grade either.  The most a M70 collector can hope for these days is to establish that any given example is a “period correct” gun.

In my limited records to date, I have recorded the present day configuration 14 of the first 270 pre-64 M70 serial numbers (5% of the total).  Not bad for survey purposes but a long way, as you put it, from the documentation you seek. 

I am sorry that I am unable to be of further assistance.

Lou