Many, if not most, here know that the rivalry between Colt and S&W manifested itself in neither manufacturer connecting the other's name in any way to their own products. This extended to ammunition. For example, the .32 and .38 Colt New Police cartridges were essentially the same as the .32 S&W L and .38 S&W cartridges, except for the name and the flat bullet nose.

While cleaning and reorganizing my messy garage, I found amongst a quantity of old ammunition a nearly full box of Winchester .38 Colt Special ammunition. Many have heard of it but may never have seen any. The only visible difference from the .38 S&W Special is that the Colt round has a flat nosed lead bullet, and the headstamp is 38 Special instead of .38 S&W Special. Colt's revolver barrel stamp was also simply "38 Special" instead of ".38 S&W Special Ctg" as used by S&W. This Winchester type 2 box is from sometime in the 1932-35 period, and the ammunition probably remains sure fire. About 10 years ago I sacrificed six rounds of it to see if it still fired OK, and of course it did. Note that the box label shows the headstamp as 38 Colt Spl, but that HS was not used on the cartridge itself. The .38 Colt Special cartridge was loaded until around 1950, last appearing in the Remington 1950 ammunition catalog.

Thank you for sharing.

Yes, I love this.

Will have to see what I have hidden. Thanks.

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USMC 69-93 Combat Pistol Inst.

Cool box!
I've never seen those markings before. It seems like an odd thing for Winchester to do.

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"I also cook."

Actually I believe that .38 Colt Special was still catalogued into at least 1960-61. As noted, the only difference was the flat point bullet instead of round nosed as in all the S&W cartridges that were marketed as Colt versions. The only cartridge not sold as both makes was .44 Special!

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Gunsmithing since 1961

The final appearance of the .38 Colt Special in both Remington and Peters ammunition catalogs was in 1950. Going back to 1930, no cartridge identifiable as .38 Colt Special can be found in Western listings. A cartridge identified as “.38 Special (Flat Point)” last shows up on the 1954 Winchester cartridge list. I have no idea if the .38 Colt Special appeared beyond that date on the loading lists of foreign ammunition manufacturers such as CIL in Canada.

A bit smaller in diameter, but from the same era........

Attached Images

Winchester Stayless .22.jpg (189.9 KB, 17 views)

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USMC 69-93 Combat Pistol Inst.

The .22 Leader box is from a bit later, they were introduced in the late 1930s as a sort-of economy grade match ammunition. There were two slightly different .22 Leader box variations of that design recognized, involving the width of the top and bottom blue bands on the label. I think yours is the later one. The Leader boxes are unusual as they were produced only for a few years just prior to WWII.