Marking question

[Shotz90s]

Can anyone tell me what this mark is to the upper right of the serial number or if its nothing that means a darn thing.

[running-man]

Looks like an importer added 'H' to me.

[Loose}{Cannon]

I still dont know what to make of these... Could be importer mark, exporter mark.. Who knows.   

[running-man]

You know why I think it's exporter (or possibly) importer specific?

/?5\ guns:
Uzz75's nice example (from Italy), no letter anywhere:


Yet look at some of these ones that are from the US (that came in pre-94)
Letter after the arsenal stamp:


Letter prior to the S/N:


Letter between the S/N and the arsenal stamp:


Letter on top of the arsenal stamp:


I don't think these letters were put on by the importers (to create unique S/N's) due to the extreme variability of the placement.  It makes no sense to try and say that a letter after the arsenal stamp should be part of the S/N when there was ample space to stamp it between the S/N and arsenal stamp.

My personal thought is that the stamps were placed there by the exporters in China.  We see these letters on numerous guns imported from into the US during the same import window.  It could be that the exporter stamped each gun as it left the country as a sort of tracking method, to make sure the correct PLA run company was properly credited with the sale or that the Chinese knew which storage depot released which guns for export.  This needs data to flesh it out though.

I've begun collecting the letter prefix/suffix information in the NON-/26\ Serial/Arsenal Data Collection Thread  Hopefully it will shed some light into which letters were used, and maybe we can find a correlation between the import stamps/import years/ and different letters.

[Loose}{Cannon]

My personal thought is that the stamps were placed there by the exporters in China

I would have to agree...  'Importer' theory makes no sense to me.