As you will read often in this Forum, the factory did not ship in serial number order, but rather grabbed the first one on the shelf to fill an order. That may often have been the last one on the shelf to come off the line. With increasing inventories, guns made after the Civil War could have been in inventory for some time, so the only way to obtain an accurate date is to obtain a factory letter.

Our friend Ed has information contained in original logs from the factory that others do not have access to, so I would take Ed's date to the bank.

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Gary
SWCA 2515