Winchester 101 3 barerel set|Winchester Shotguns|Forum|Winchester Collector

What Bert says. There is one fellow I’ve run into – a collector and quasi dealer in small bore 101s. He has some partial Olin-Kodensha internal records and he was very helpful in giving me photos and dimensions of the rare 28 gauge 101s built on the “baby” frame as opposed to those built on the very slightly larger 20 gsige flame. 

He would be worth talking to, in my opinion. I will try to dig up his particulars and PM them to you.

I can tell you there is a serious amount of collector interest in the high grade small bore [28 and 410) 101 guns and sets. If in mint condition with boxes and papers. 

I also suggest you regularly search Gunbroker for CLOSED auctions of these guns, sorted by highest number of bids, not highest price. If you do the latter you will get 4 bazillion auctions that drew zero bids, which will be impossible to plow through. You have to be a member of Gunbroker to do this but it costs nothing to join. Proving you are who you say you are can be tedious. 

One other thing. The serial number on your gun contains the coded manufacturing year. I’ll see if I can find my notes on the key. 

The Olin-Kodensha joint venture ended in about 1989 or 1990, when the land underlying its factory in the Tochigi Prefecture on the outskirts of Tokyo, was sold for other development. The breakup must have been somewhat chaotic and unanticipated. 

The Winchester-Western Division of Olin Industries had gotten out of the gunmaking business at the end of 1980 but for some reason had retained its interest in Olin-Kodensha, until the joint venture’s dissolution. 

Nevertheless, it’s a pretty safe bet that nobody at Olin was really monitoring what was going on in Japan within a couple of years after it quit making guns. 

The manufacturing and production records concerning the Japanese Winchesters were apparently kept in Japan and Olin had no interest in acquiring them. Some former OK American engineers got some of the records but nobody has published anything I’m aware of. 

At one time there wss a collecting group based in Grass Valley, California concerned with the Japanese Winchesters and the Golden Eagle brand of rifles and shotguns Kodensha had been building in the Tochigi factory alongside the Winchester brand guns. 

Despite WW 1960 literature to the contrary, Winchester had nothing to do with the development of the 101. It was a product Kodensha had designed and had been selling in Europe for several years. The Model 23 was a Kodensha copy of the Manufrance Robust model that had been manufactured in postwar France. 

In essence, when the joint venture folded, neither Olin nor USRAC had any parental interest in the product or the records. 

Sad, was probably a beautiful set.

Mike