(*) In August of 1999, Remington stopped stamping the barrels with the date codes. As an added bonus to Remington being able to provide the year of manufacture, they should also be able to provide the grade the firearm left the factory as.
If these additional pieces of information still do not clear up the year of manufacture, or if there is any confusion in general over date of manufacture/factory date codes, contacting Remington Customer Service with the firearms serial number will be required. After that one brings into play what is known of the history, such as the year first acquired. This sleuthing is accomplished in part by first determining the years that your specific firearm was manufactured. So a little sleuthing may have to be done to determine the exact year the firearm was manufactured. NOTE – Some of these year letters repeat, as can be seen below. The next letter or letters will correspond to the year manufactured. These twelve letters correspond to the twelve months in a year, and are the month code.ī = January L = February A = March C = April K = May P = June O = July W = August D = September E = October R = November X = December The first character of the sequence will always be one of these letters: There will be a combination of two or three letters representing the month and year of manufacture. They are located on the left side of the barrel, just ahead of the receiver. These codes are fairly simple and straightforward to read. Or by using the factory date codes on the barrel of the firearm. That is by either contacting the good folks at Remington’s Customer Service section (link at bottom) with the serial number. There two ways that someone can determine the “Made On” date of their Remington firearm.
Example of an actual barrel date code - RJ - stamped on a Remington model 870 Express shotgun barrel made in November 1989.