Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Redux: Gene's 1920/26 Project Thread

Here is some information for your project.

#01111 is the long action prototype military rifle in 30-06.

#10170 is the long action prototype sporting rifle that is short chambered in 256 Newton, listed in the R&D log as being chambered in 30-06. I don't know who owns this rifle today, but it was once part of Bruce Jennings Newton collection and sold to settle his estate.

There are at least two other long action 1920 military prototypes, a rifle similar to #01111 chambered in 7x57, and a hybrid 1920-SMLE #1 MK3 chambered in .303 British.

The following are some that I've owned:

#1602 - in 250-3000, accepted on 03/12/20 and shipped on 03/15/20 to Smith-Winchester Company.

#2718 - in 250-3000, accepted on 04/17/20 and shipped on 04/20/20 to Weed And Company in Savannah.

#3949 - in 250-3000, accepted on 06/15/22 and shipped on 06/19/22 to Missoula Mercantile Company.

#4217 - in 250-3000, accepted on 05/19/20 and shipped on 05/20/20 to Colonel E.G. Delafield on a consignment account, whatever that was. Colonel Delafield returned it to Savage on 09/05/24 and it was subsequently logged as an "office sample" on 10/08/28. This rifle is listed in the R&D log as being a Model 1916, but is an early 1920.

#4633 - in 250-3000, accepted on 05/27/20 and shipped on 07/10/20 to E.K. Tryon Company in Philadelphia.

#10594 - in 250-3000, accepted on 06/17/26 and shipped on 06/17/26 to Harry Harrison.

#10659 - in 300 Savage, accepted on 06/28/26 and shipped on 06/30/26 to Simmons Hardware Company in St. Louis.

#10821 - in 250-3000, accepted on 08/17/26 and shipped on 09/25/26 to Albany Hardware And Iron Company.

#11427 in 300 Savage, shipped on 09/28/28 to Lou J. Eppinger.

#11920 in 300 Savage, shipped on 10/12/27 to John E. Larrabee Company.

#11926 in 300 Savage, shipped on 07/30/27 to Gere Woodrings And Company.

#12273 - in 300 Savage was consigned to the R&D collection on 10/02/29.

Cody could take an intern, sit them down at a big desk in front of the books and probably have all the numbers ran that this forum would want in an afternoon. This sort of work is right up my alley and if they charge a princely sum then they are price gouging. Now as a museum I don't mind making a donation. Museums serve an important function and they should be supported by the public

I have a letter from Mr. Clark with that information, but I can't find it in my 1920 binder. I've posted the information on this site previously, maybe somebody with better search skills than me can find those posts. IIRC, the change was made in June 1926 around SN 10500. My #10594 was accepted 06/17/26, the same week as the change over. Mr. Clark's letter on 10594 is dated 03/24/93.

You're a wealth of information Jeff. Many thanks!

My beat up 1920 #1032X action, with Lyman #54 came in 1926 style solid stock and matching butt plate both #1100X.

A fun rabbit hole to follow down...

Got ya covered.


From your data above, 10,500 would be around June 15, 1926.

Cody has the ledgers, and once you are a member getting a serial number lookup isn't that expensive. Quite a bit cheaper than it ever has been before. Even a $150 membership lets you buy a pack of 50 serial number lookups at $5/each for $250 total.

Even counting in the $150 membership, that's under $8/lookup - much cheaper than was possible ever since Roe had the records. You don't get a letter for each one, but you do get all the info. I'm waiting on my first set of info.

If you don't want 50, just want 5? The $150 membership gets you 5 searches as part of the membership, so that's $30/apiece. Not much more than Callahan was doing, and most of the $150 is tax deductible.

Want just 1? Well.. that's where it sucks. $75 letter for non-member.

Here are a few more without letters:

2097 - 250-30000

3949 - 300 Savage, the lowest SN 1920 in 300 Savage that I've owned

7427 - 300 Savage

10659 - 300 Savage

11404 - 250-3000, from Australia with British? proof marks on the barrel and stamped "Not British Made"

12504 - 300 Savage, an odd configuration, as the tail block is not d&t for a Lyman #54 and there is a King open rear sight in a barrel dovetail. The absence of the factory d&t holes in the tail block suggests that it didn't come with a Lyman #54 and was manufactured with the open rear sight in the barrel dovetail. This is the only 20/26 that I've seen in this configuration.

I'm going to have limited ambulatory status for about 6 weeks following knee surgery on 03/29. I managed to tear the meniscus off the bone in my left knee and the repair requires no weight bearing in order to properly heal for about 6 weeks. I'll have time to sort through the dozen or so boxes of Savage and Savage-related print ads that I've accumulated over the years and hope to find letters from Mr. Clark on some of the other 1920s and 20/26s that I've owned. I've owned close to 100 of them in total, but have less than half still around.

PS - a comment on 10821 that I listed in a previous post in this thread, this rifle has a curved, rifle-style, Savage butt-plate that the seller claimed was ordered that way by his grandfather. The story goes that his grandfather was only around 5'8", so he needed a shorter LOP and preferred the curved rifle-style butt-plate. It is a correct Savage rifle-style butt-plate and perfectly installed, so if it wasn't done by Savage, whoever did it, did an extra nice job. This rifle came out of Driggs, Idaho, just west of GTNP and about 30 miles south of YSNP, so maybe somebody's mountain elk rifle nearly 100 years ago.

OT - I feel you Jeff.

Sheared the meniscus off the weight bearing portion of my left femoral condyle. Seeing the sports medicine surgeon this coming Tuesday.

I'm getting tired of hobbling about like a fat old man.

Let me know if you want to start taking contributions as a sort of "group purchase." I'd be happy to chip in and I would have no problem with you or any other member of the forum becoming the holder of the membership on behalf of us all. A group effort like this could end up being a new way for the forum to get information from an established archive that otherwise would be speculative or piecemeal.

FWIW, here's my list:.

3478 model 1920 250/3000
8053 model 1920 250/3000
10005 model 1920 250/3000
12991 model 20/26 250/3000 Lyman 54

no letters

Forgot to mention that mine hasn’t been housebroken. It has no papers.

Can't breed it with other ones then either, if you want top dollar for the offspring.

It sounds like we've got the same injury.

The surgeon told me that I'd need a knee replacement within eight years if I didn't have this surgery. The MRI shows that the cartilage in my other knee is almost gone, so I'll almost certainly have to have an artificial knee on the right side sometime before 2030.

Most likely sheared it off (according to the former sports doctor of the Hamilton Tiger Cats, Canadian Football - CFL) with a single slip, twist and fall while out salmon fishing on my buddy's boat six months back. Now I'm rethinking all my future plans regarding upland bird hunting.

Knee microfracture surgery?? Friends ( husband and wife) went to Germany for knee and hip replacements with 3D printed joints that were laser measured to fit. This allows for the replacement of half the joint and a shorter recovery time, if I understood correctly. I should have planned better financially...

Looking at this well worn 1926 rifle with a busted stock at the wrist, half sanded off checkering with a barrel devoid of bluing and the capped muzzle of this 95 year old Savage, and I'm beginning to think I can relate a little at 61.

Worked hard / played hard!

It'd be good for getting a bunch of individual information.. but the problem with trying to work from single rifle entries is that so many went out late. Look at any ledger pages and you'll find many that went out 2 or 8 months late, for no special reason. So the info is good.. but can be confusing. So I'm not sure how much specific good would be gotten from getting info on 500 specific guns if all you're getting is info on that one, single gun.

I'm not saying I don't have ideas.. or that info on individual rifles isn't useful (FAR better than nothing!).. but we'll see.

I guess I have to ask what data specifically are you looking for? I've never requested factory letters but it seems like they are good for identifying the dates that guns were shipped in and out of the factory warehouse and where they were shipped to. I would guess Cody has pretty much the same info. Couldn't this data be used to establish a chronology for production? Even if it had issues as you mentioned it still would be something worthy of putting together. Then again maybe I'm not fully understanding the problem here.

Suppose I get a factory letter for rifle 11.5xx, and it gives me an accepted from factory date of September, 1901.

Does that establish fall of 1901 as the general date for 11.5xx serial numbed rifles? Nope... it establishes fall of 1901 as the date for THAT rifle. The general date for 11.5xx is probably summer of 1899. The rifle in question was just accepted 2 years later than it's serial number would indicate. Why? No idea..

This is, by the way, is a real example.

Every ledger page would provide a shotgun pattern of dates, with many falling into an early zone but with others that are 2, 3, 6, 24 months later. They provide meaning if you get enough data for a group, but just getting one or two dates for a group of rifles might get ones that are later and skew your data.

Thanks and wow, that’s a serious error factor for determining dates of production. I had no idea the dates given in factory letters were that sloppy. And frankly I’ve always found little use for factory letters and this just reinforces that thought. So what types of data are the letters good for?

I think that factory letter are very useful for collectible firearms that are in excellent original condition or in unusual configurations.

My 1899 250-3000 in 22 HP is a rifle that doesn't exist as a cataloged configuration, but the factory letter proves that it was factory built on special order.

I paid Mr. Clark over $1K before I could really afford to do so, but I felt that having factory letters would make the rifles more valuable to collectors when it come time to sell them. Time will tell if it was money well spent, but it is only money and the mints print more of it every day.

Thanks and I can see what you mean with collectible 99s. For mine, however, a letter might tell me who a gun went to and at a seemingly unreliable date. I really don’t own any top shelf collectible 99s but I do see what you mean.