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By Dick Fraser A box of unusual looking Remington .22 Long Rifle cartridges showed up in a gun shop in Fairfield, CT, just southwest of Bridgeport where it was made. Loaded into conventional copper “U” headstamped cases were these cylindrical lead bullets with a large nose cavity, half filled with dried lubricant. The company name on the box, “Remington Arms-Union Metallic Cartridge Company” combined with the red ball “Remington UMC”logo indicated mid-teens production. Indeed, decoding the date stamp “G21EFZ” revealed that it was packaged on October 21, 1915. Also rubber-stamped on the top and bottom labels were the letters “GULLY”. The Remington-UMC catalogs from thatRead More →

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By Dick Fraser This is all really Rich Rains’ fault. He threw down the gauntlet at one of his .22 box collector meetings at the St. Louis International Cartridge Show (SLICS) some years ago. Referring to the letter/number box filling date codes rubber stamped on the bottom of early Remington .22 boxes, he proposed that if you wrote down enough of them a pattern would emerge and decode itself. So I did. All my Remington boxes; .22’s, center fires, rim fires, etc. D19D, C21P, F8P, J11A, L17A, 20OT, I9A, P9B, E7RPX, G30H and on and on and on. No revelation, just spots before my eyes.Read More →

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The Danish M.1923 Handgranate designated the Haandbombe Model 1923 was developed by the Danish and produced in Denmark. After the German occupation in April of 1940, the ordnance plants continued the production of the Haandbombe Model 1923 using the German nomenclature: Handgranate 342d (An Offensive Version) and Handgranate 343d (A Defensive Version). There were two color variations that can be found, one being Grey with a Black Band and a less common variation in Yellow with dates observed from 1940 to 1945. There are a variey of markings which include “23”; “K” inside a 12 pointed star; “AK/B 194x” (194x being the date); and “AMA”Read More →