ulflyer
Member
I have a Colt 4" barrel 45acp, in like new condition, don't believe it has ever been fired. Serial nr is 498**-LW. I know the LW stands for light weight, but can anyone give me an idea when it was made?
Colts website has a serial number lookup tool.I have a Colt 4" barrel 45acp, in like new condition, don't believe it has ever been fired. Serial nr is 498**-LW. I know the LW stands for light weight, but can anyone give me an idea when it was made?
it doesn’t work for newer modelsColts website has a serial number lookup tool.
Ahhh, gotcha. Most of my Colts are from the '60s so Ive never run into that.it doesn’t work for newer models
Proofhouse has listings for the serial numbers ending in LW. I may not be reading this correctly but it looks like 1967-68 for your serial number.
https://proofhouse.com/colt/
FYI, I entered 49811LW and 49899LW and the website returned 1967. Only a year is provided on the website.
https://colt.com/serial-lookup
Thank you so much for that. I have been casually following this thread and from the first I thought: "Isn't that a Commander?"A 4.25" barreled 1911 would be "Commander" length.
Original Commander's were aluminum framed, they were simply known as Commander. Colt added a steel framed option later and to differentiate them from the aluminum framed guns, they called the steel framed guns Combat Commanders. At that point in the line-up you had a Commander (aluminum frame) and Combat Commander (steel frame).
Later, perhaps the 1990's or 2000's, Colt changed their nomenclature. Aluminum framed Commanders became known as Lightweight Commander, and the steel frame models (previously known as Combat Commander), were simply named Commander. The Combat name was dropped, and the Lightweight was added. Now Colt's line-up has a Commander (steel frame) and a Lightweight Commander (aluminum frame).