1976 "RARE" Double 'S' Variety (Woodsman/Huntsman)

ping10 said:

Very nice find.... I'm surprised none of the woodsman/huntsmans pros have chimed in on this. I am courious as to how rare these are and what they go for when they do come up. With only 1300 or so with the double S stamp I bet they are very hard to find. Nice one TJ

Colin

Click to expand...

Not a whole lot to add to what has already been said by the OP, but I will try.

They are hard to find, since there are only 1336 of them. Enough so that I feel compelled to turn over every Huntsman I see at a gun show to check the serial number.

Especially hard to find is the 4-1/2" version. I have seen perhaps a couple dozen double S Huntsmans, and only maybe 5 or 6 have had the shorter barrel. While researching the shipping records at Colt I looked into doing a count, but due to the way the records were kept in the post-WWII years that would involve manually searching approximately 15-20 feet of shelf space filled with ring binders, page by page. Obviously not a practical solution. What I did was look up the few for which I knew the shipping date and checked for others of like type on the same shipping document. Few that I saw had the shorter barrel.

The following is a copy and paste from my colt22.com web site, and is also included in my Colt Woodsman Pocket Guide.

"Double S Huntsman: The serial number series that began with 001001S passed 100000S in 1976, and reached 101336S before it was noticed that numbers used in 1952 were being duplicated. In order to salvage the 1336 guns already numbered past 100000S, they were hand stamped with an S prefix, in addition to the suffix, thereby creating the "Double S" variation. All KNOWN examples are Huntsmans. (Thanks to Ed Brink, in his Colt Rimfire Automatic Pistols, for the "Double S" information.)"

Rather than continue with more duplicate serial numbers, Colts decided to restart with numbers well above any that had been previously used. Again, from my colt22.com web site, and also from my Colt Woodsman Pocket Guide:

"Due to reaching a serial number range (100,000S) that had already been used in 1952, serial numbers were restarted again in May, 1976, beginning with 300001S. Contrary to some published reports, all models of the Woodsman line - Target, Sport, Match Target, Huntsman, and Targetsman - were manufactured in the serial number range that began with 300001S."

Bob Rayburn
colt22.com