Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Savage Collectors Model 99H with uncommon stampings

I would think that stamp was the way it was originally intend for the guns be stamped. That was just another way to represent a date - 1899, or '99, or even just 99 based on the context, can mean the same thing. It had nothing to do with the change in models done by Savage in the early 1920’s; those occurred before they started to drop the 18 from the date. In the parts catalogs they use '99 from 1924 until 1928, finally dropping the apostrophe in the 1931 issue. Starting with the 1924 parts catalog all models based on years were truncated using an apostrophe and the last two digits, even for models that were discontinued. The change in the way a date was represented had nothing to do with a change in the model, this was being done by most gun manufactures around that time, Winchester & Marlin dropped the 18 from their models and there were no changes in the guns.

The first Savage models to not be represented that way were the Model 28 & 29, even the model 23 & 25 were represented as a truncated date.

I did not have a Murray’s for many years since I collect Savage’s other than the lever actions and I got my information from Savage catalogs and other literature. That’s why I never saw a distinction between an 1899 and a 99, because for Savage Arms there wasn’t any, it was just another way to represent a year.