Need a second opinion

[running-man]

What letter is this:





Seller seems to think it's an F.  I'm not so certain.  F's on either side of this S/N are well formed:









Maybe this is our missing G and the one we thought was a G is actually an L?



Thoughts?

[Bunker]

I have old eyes but I don't see any round curves.  Not sure what letter it is but it's consistent on the different parts.

[running-man]

It could easily be an F.  The next question to ask is "Why is it so much different from F's stamped only 20 rifles before and after it."

Refurb re-stamp?

[Power Surge]

Look at ALL the other digits you've posted...the numbers. 7s are different, 2s are different, 1s are different...etc...between some of those guns also.

[running-man]

Look at ALL the other digits you've posted...the numbers. 7s are different, 2s are different, 1s are different...etc...between some of those guns also.

I see the 1's & 2's being different only because of the strike angle/depth. The 7's from F1779 and ?1887 are fundamentally different though.

[Power Surge]

Look at ALL the other digits you've posted...the numbers. 7s are different, 2s are different, 1s are different...etc...between some of those guns also.

I see the 1's & 2's being different only because of the strike angle/depth. The 7's from F1779 and ?1887 are fundamentally different though.

The 1s and 2s are absolutely different. Half the 2s you posted have no uptail at the bottom, and half of them do. No sign of light stampings on the ones that don't. The 1s are a bit more subtle difference, but look closely...  some of them have the flag at the top immediately going down at an angle, and some of them clearly come off the top flat to the left and then drop down.

From what I'm seeing, there most definitely were different stamp dies.

[bbush44]

The F1911 stamped exactly 24 guns after this one is exactly the same as the F1832.

I thought that F1911 looked familiar...

[Phosphorus32]

The only letter prefix T56s I have are F's.  The 1's and the F's do look quite different on my two examples, admittedly, they're 5120 rifles apart. 

I have to say your original example is rather odd looking. Could be wear and tear due to stamp age and/or quite a few different stamps with rather low standards for uniformity between stamp makers.  I wonder what the average lifetime of a letter would be on these series of stamps since the letter didn't change for 10,000 rifles whereas the other numbers would only see 1/10th the amount of use.  They probably went through a lot of letter stamps.

I would guess if it was a badly broken A or B stamp it would have been changed before they stamped the whole rifle...but I'm guessing like everyone else.