Today I picked up a Colt Trooper MK III. She's in good condition, with some minor scratches in the finish, but overall looks to be in great shape. As I always like to do, I did a quick search to find the year of manufacture. Colt's resource declares the following date for my gun with sn#: 158xxU: 2008. It does identify the model correctly as a MK III, and it is the only item that pops up under that number, instead of the usual list of different models and possible years. I assume this is incorrect as the MK III was supposedly discontinued in 1982. Other serial number resources show different number ranges for the the model, nothing quite like what my gun has.

Is there anywhere else that I can reference for year of manufacture, or did Colt do any special runs in the 2000s of the MK III?



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If you haven’t done so already plug the serial number into Colt’s serial number search function on their website. It should pop up identifying the gun and year of manufacture.....I think your serial number is 158xxj. 15801J -15899J is from 1973. Just my two cents.

158XXU=1982

Try proofhouse.com.

I did this and it came up with Trooper MK III with a manufacture year of 2008. Also, it's defintiely a "U" and not a "J"

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That's sort of what I was thinking... I tried throwing in some adjacent numbers to see if I could find any other guns in the same range with different dates, however Colt's database didn't have anything for one or two numbers up or down, however changing the "U" to a "V" gave me a hit on a MK V or Lawman from 1983, suggesting I was in the ballpark.

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Tried it, their records stop in 1978, and have a different format of serial number from what my gun has on it. This leads me to believe its later prodiction than 1978, thinking that 1982, last year of production is correct.

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I never realized that. The "newest " production Colt I own is from 1972 so I never thought about it.

That sure is a nice revolver! no matter the year

Using a chart from a Book (!)

The MkIII Series including the Lawman, Trooper, Official Police, Officers Model Match & Metropolitan

Started in 1969 w/ # J1001
OffModel Match production stopped in '71
Ser# 1001J started in 1972
Ser# L1001 started in '76
Ser# 1001L started in '78
Ser# Y1001 Started in '79
Ser# 00001U Started in '81
'U' block ends in 1982 w/ser#31290U
'Y block ends in 1982 w/ser# Y42862
Ser# 010000V begins in 1982
;V' block ends in 1985 with ser# 44284V


From this info it would seem the 'U' block pf ser#'s was used from 81 to '82.
Wether Colt set the separate serial letter prefixes aside for a certain model I don't know. But I'd assume so, at least post GCA when different models were supposed to have an identifier in the ser# to show just that.

Thank you, this is very helpful! So I assume from this data, that my gun with sn #: 158xxU would then fall somewhere in mid to late 1981 then, assuming pretty steady production rates.

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