Brass Shell

[Morgoroth]

One of my students' parents found this while doing some work on an old house downtown. It was buried about 5 feet in the ground and the house was built in the '20s.

The best I could figure out with my own research was that it was probably made between 1860 and 1960, but I figure you guys could probably get a little closer than 100 years.

I know it's a brass shotgun shell, and it says "Winchester" across the top, and "No. 12" on the bottom for the head stamp. Its almost impossible to read though because of the corrosion.

So, what do you guys think?
Shell 1

Sorry, I didn't realize that last one is upside down.

 

[James K]

Maybe I can narrow that a bit. Winchester did not market a shotgun until 1880, when it began to sell a line of English doubles under the Winchester name. So it would not have produced any shotshells before that.

Jim

 

[Morgoroth]

Thanks! That's at least 20 years off of my window.

 

[Morgoroth]

I've had some problems with the links in the original post, so I thought I would add them to the thread as attachments.

 

[Hardcase]

It should be a Winchester 12 gauge shell that was made between 1894 and 1900 or possibly in the early to mid 1920s. Between 1901 and 1920, the headstamp was "1901" instead of "Winchester". In 1921, they went back to "Winchester" and sometime in the '20s, they changed from "No." to "GA".

 

[Morgoroth]

Thanks for the help.
Is there any way to tell which set of dates it would be?
Did both of those time periods have the rolled end to hold the shot in?

 

[Hardcase]

There probably is a way, but unfortunately, I spilled my guts in the post above - I don't know anything else. That's just info that I ran across a while back when I was really interested in loading brass shotgun shells.