Hello, and welcome to the WACA site. I would recommend you put the link to the listing so that the people who can answer your questions can see the actual rifle, as that would be the best way to get the answer your looking for. I wouldn’t be worried about someone on here sneaking in on your rifle, if that’s of any concern- 

Hi jpad-

There isn’t much to go on in that ad, unfortunately. 

The stock, from the side view appears to be a correct Winchester marksman stock as furnished on the pre-64 M70.  It appears to have the butt stock swivel and to be missing the front swivel/adjustable hand stop assembly.  You’ll need to get a photo of the underside of the fore end. The complete assembly looks like this:

For reference, I included the three versions of the front swivel.  The early assemblies (rail/swivels/screws) were finished in a satin chrome like the top left swivel.  In the early 1940s the factory started bluing these parts, like the complete assembly shown at the bottom.  Sometime in the 1950s they changed the shape of the front swivel to that on the top right.  There was a lot of overlap in the changeover, and this 1955 rifle should have one or the other of the two blued swivels.  Hopefully the adjustment rail is still present even if the swivel is missing.  You can usually find the swivel on eBay.

Since I’m carrying on, I will make a couple other observations about that rifle.

While the front scope block appears to be the correct type (should be 0.360″ tall), the block on the bridge is a replacement.  The factory scope blocks looked like this (with the rear block mounted on the receiver ring, not the bridge):

It is VERY UNUSUAL for a M70 TARGET barrel to have a dovetail cut for a rear sight.  Not impossible, but very unusual.  The factory often put both D&T holes and sight dovetails on the straight taper heavy barrels used on the early 375 MAGNUM rifles, but they’re not commonly found on the target rifles barrels of the same contour.  That said, the dovetail on this one appears to be in about the right place for where one would be if it were going to be there and I cannot rationalize why anybody but the factory would perform such a superfluous milling step on a target rifle. 

I also cannot see the muzzle end of the barrel to tell whether it has two D&T holes or a dovetail for mounting a front sight base. I’d be more comfortable that the superfluous rear sight dovetail we can see was factory if this rifle had been assembled with a leftover 2nd variation barrel (1937-51) than if it had the 3rd variation barrel (1955-63) with the D&T holes. 

The other clue as to the age of the barrel, the roll marking, is just a little too low resolution for my tired old eyes to make out whether it’s got a style 3A (pre-1950) or 3C caliber designation:

The difference is whether the “220 SWIFT” was part of the roll marking die and followed by a hyphen (3C) or whether it was a separate stamp (3A).  I bring this up b/c if it’s style 3A the barrel would have been made in ’49 or earlier and have the dovetail at the muzzle.  In the pics above (both 220 SWIFT target rifles) also note that neither barrel has a rear sight dovetail.

FWIW having a pre-1950 barrel on a 1955 target rifle in 220 SWIFT would not be a problem IMHO.  The target rifle in 220 SWIFT was dropped from the catalog in 1952 and NEVER reinstated.  The factory didn’t catalog rifles with target weight 220 SWIFT barrels until that chambering was added to the Varmint rifle offerings in 1959.  I’m not saying that the factory didn’t MAKE 220 SWIFT target rifles after 1952, only that to assemble one in 1955 they would likely have needed to go back a pull an older barrel from inventory.

Anyway, those are some of the things I’d need to ask about the gun.  Except for being refinished it is an interesting (and possibly original) piece and I’d like to know the full serial number so I could include it in the survey.

Best,

Lou