Wooden 38 spl ammo box

I recently acquired a 38 Spl wooden ammo box from an antique dealer, and I have several questions that I hope someone can answer for me.

From the stampings can you tell the date of manufacture?

There is a crossed cannon/ US Ordinance stamp just above the “38”. Do I assume correctly that this was for certain military ammo?

Is this box rare? I paid $50 for it.

Do you have any other observations or comments about this ammo box? Thanks

 

Dunno, but it's pretty cool!

 

Based on the T2BAA stamp, i found this below. This numbering system was used by the military from 1942 through 1958.

 

Bigblue94, thanks for that most helpful information.

Are such boxes rare? I have never seen one for 38 spl before.

 

All wooden boxes are rare now. But as far as among wooden boxes, i cant say. Im not a collector, was just intrigued with finding the info lol. Id say 50 bucks was a fine buy: not a steal but you didnt get raked over the coals either. Its in real nice shape too.

I used to have an old DuPont Dynamite box, before a fire claimed it.

 

Awesome box. I love old wooden boxes. I have 2 milsurp ammo boxes too.

 

Parked my 38 spl box next to my 30 06 box. They are friends already.
One big difference is the 30 06 box contains its original unopened spam cans of ammo.

 

I think western and others started using nails to build the boxes sometime in the 1940s. Before that, the sides were joined with finger joints (often erroneously called dove-tails). Wooden shot shell boxes are fairly common, probably because it took more boxes to ship a given number of shotshells than metallic cartridges of any size.