0296 M21 Mystery

[Loose}{Cannon]

The serials on these guns have bothered me for some time now.  Its becoming some type of obsessive compulsive disorder thats headed down the road to meltyourbrainville.   

Lets try and figure this out guys...  What do we know about chinese serialization practices and how can we begin to explain what they did with these guns serials.  Call it whatever you like, but these guns had to have 'some' type of non conventional purpose for them to have received the m21 designation and their serials to have been screwed with compared to all other chinese. 

The subject of this thread is NOT what said reason for them being different is, but rather what did they do to the serial numbers and what sense of them can we make.

Im going to go ahead and extract the serial data we have on these guns from the serial data board for public view in this thread so everyone can see them.

M21 0296 7090818x, 7090855x, 7090964x, 7090967x, 7091031x, 7091052x, 7091104x, 7091143x, 7091168x, 7091239x, 7091305x, 7091487x, 7091550x, 7091644x, 7091694x, 7091677x, 7091686x, 7091735x, 7091744x, 7091768x, 7091842x, 7091865x, 7091866x, 7091887x, 7091996x

416 M21 2301473x, 2301521x, 2301585x, 230176xx, 2301919x, 2301946x, 2301969x, 2302001x,


Ok, so the m21 from 416 Im not concerned with as we know their serials followed the typical pattern making them 1978 made guns. 

I see something very odd about the 0296 serials in the above list.  Can anyone point out what Im seeing? 

Based on what we know, they are 1978/79/80 guns based on the fact they are identical to the /26\ guns of those years.  How do you get to that year with those serials on that list?

[Greasemonkey]

The serials on these guns have bothered me for some time now.  Its becoming some type of obsessive compulsive disorder thats headed down the road to meltyourbrianville.   

I don't know why you wanna melt Brian, what did he do... but I'll play... 

70 is the year made? with 6 a digit serial........ 70 could be possible.. /0296\ was probably actually /26\.....which like a Type 53 from way back in the golden days was /296\.. so...

err, ehm,...............  you came up with a Kennedy assassination plot where the guy on the grassy knoll, named Brian, put an extra 0 after the 7.... as in..... based on....."if" they are "assumed" 1979 made rifles, not 1970 made, so 7, extra 0, 91104x,  if'en they left the serial 791104x, it would have duplicated another rifle and a duplicated 7 million serial is no good, screws the bean counters up. It got their paper tags all screwed up in the bins. So, they threw an extra 0 on the front of the factory number and the serial number, the tags and bins were straight again, and all was right with the world.... So now, ya gotta drop both zeros.. rifle serial 791104x, made at Factory /296\ in 1979.

A 70million rifle is a bit of a stretch..... considering... I mean, 70,911,04x

Brian put the extra zeros in.....   melt him

[Phosphorus32]

Hmm. If they are definitely all late 70's features so you're certain they aren't 1970 manufacture, then...

7090818x is the first one, and 7091996x is the last one observed to date in the US.

So maybe the prefix is 709 and the indexing part of the serial number is the last 5 digits where they never expected to produce more than 100,000, and maybe only made about 20,000.  Maybe the lowest serial we've observed is due to the Chinese having shipped the first 8000 to some other country for use (or maybe they've popped up in Canada or Australia).

If the prefix is indeed 709, maybe it means 1970 + 9 = 1979? Some poor attempt at obfuscation?

Okay, I'm getting a bit of motion sickness from all of my hand-waving, but that's that I've got at a glance.

P.S. Apologies to those with red-green color blindness.

[Loose}{Cannon]

Phos is on FIRE along the lines Im thinking.

Those 0s after the 9s.....   There is no damn way the would start the serials at 90k guns.   709 is the designator.

[Loose}{Cannon]

Any ideas why they may have shoved that 0 in thar?

[Phosphorus32]

Any ideas why they may have shoved that 0 in thar?

If the prefix is indeed 709, maybe it means 1970 + 9 = 1979? Some poor attempt at obfuscation?

'70 + 9 = '79  Best I've got at the moment.

[Phosphorus32]

79   七十九   Qī shí jiǔ
80   八十   Bā shí
81   八十一   Bā shí yī
82   八十二   Bā shí èr
83   八十三   Bā shí sān
84   八十四   Bā shí sì
85   八十五   Bā shí wǔ
86   八十六   Bā shí liù
87   八十七   Bā shí qī
88   八十八   Bā shí bā
89   八十九   Bā shí jiǔ
90   九十   Jiǔ shí

Two "characters" for the decade (10's place), and one character for the specific year (1's place) would be consistent with Chinese hanzi number usage, but obviously not for standard Arabic numerals which the Chinese had used quite readily for years on the Type 56 prior to this. Just looking for any possibility, weak or strong, to explain that extra zero.

[Loose}{Cannon]

That's a really interesting idea phos!

Its interesting to note, if they had not inserted the 0 the serial would have conflicted with serials from that same arsenal... The 7m 1962.   Also, if they would have used 24 as the standard designator, it would have conflicted with the /26\ marked guns serials again from the same arsenal.