When did RCBS not stamp the date (2 digit of year) on their dies?

[orpington]

Or maybe they always did and this set of . 33 Winchester I have slipped past quality control???

 

[CoalCrackerAl]

I never noticed a date stamp on my dies. Now ill have to look.

 

[jmorris]

I don’t have the answer to your question but mine stop at “89” after that they switch to letters. Might be easier to either call them or see who has the highest number before they switched back to letters.



Found this with a search.

Here is the answer from RCBS:


"We started letter stamping our dies in 1950 and in approximately 1955-1967 we began to date stamp the production dies while continuing to letter stamp Special Order dies. We do have a chart that is not for public use but if you wish to call us and tell us what is stamped on your dies we can tell you the year of manufacture. "

I like the “approximately”…12 year span. Other search results indicate 1966 as a closer starting point for the numbers.

 

[orpington]

This one didn’t have 2 numbers or a letter. I have one that says 72 meaning 1972, and others later. Which means I didn’t know if the dies are well over 50 years old or much later.

it could be a replaced box but it’s one of the older boxes, deeper green in colour, logo painted on the front of the box, small clasp you push in place, although this delicate part is missing from my box, as so many do during that time frame.

 

[hdwhit]

My .223 Remington die set is clearly stamped "79" (which I take to be 1979 - when I bought it).

 

[FROGO207]

Is it actually a RCBS die? Someone might have subbed in another brand if you ended up with a used set. I have purchased mixed sets of dies before. The question then is did I get the best assembled set or the leftovers LOL.

 

[lightman]

The oldest set that I have has "68" on them. The next oldest has "71". Without opening every box and looking, somewhere between then and now they switched over to letters.

 

[buck460XVR]

Since RCBS dies are covered by their "lifetime" warranty, why would date of manufacture matter, other than simple curiosity?

 

[orpington]

Since I created this thread, I decided to re-examine my dies. Letters were mentioned in this thread, and I was looking for numbers, since that’s what I was used to.

First, an example of a seating die dating from 1986:



And the seating die that led to the creation of this thread:



Note the ‘L’ on the seating die. From the attached link, we know RCBS lettered dies starting from 1949 with the letter ‘A’.

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?209179-RCBS-alphabetic-date-code

And so, if my math is correct, the letter ‘L’ corresponds to the year 1960, making these dies 62 years old.

 

[orpington]

Since RCBS dies are covered by their "lifetime" warranty, why would date of manufacture matter, other than simple curiosity?

It’s purely curiosity.