Stevens 5100 side-by-side 12-gauge double-barrel

[Mark_C]

I have a STEVENS 12-guage double-barrel and I cannot find a serial number on it. Anyone have any idea where to look?

Here are the sides of the receiver. The left has manufacturer name and a image of a retriever dog while the right side has only the 5100 stamp.

 

[Dfalt]

If it's a Stevens made prior to 1968 it's likely it doesn't have a serial number, as they weren't legally required yet. I have an old Steven's single shot .410 with Sear's stamping on it with no serial number I can find anywhere either.

 

[Mark_C]

I wondered if that might be the case. I don't think that they should really be legally required, especially by the ATF, FBI, or any other law-enforcement agency. I do think that they need an identifier to help manufacturers track each item through the production, QA, storage, shipping, and service processes, especially with the accountability required by ISO-9000 certification and Sarbanes-Oxley legislation.

Ah, the good old days when engineers wrote specifications, draftsmen created the graphical artifacts, machinists produced tooling and certain parts, and the QA guys tested a sample of each batch or each item just to make sure it worked. They didn't have a team of pencil-necks generating metrics, producing statistics on material cost per unit, energy cost per unit, personnel efficiency ratings (usually based on an abstract book of estimations and case studies that were generated in a very disparate industry and irrelevant to the current situation), planned increases in production, quality, and profit margin that are driven more by shareholder demands and executive hopes and dreams rather than reality. The advanced accounting overhead in many companies is likely the primary drain on profit margin and the cause of morale issues in these companies. They drive experienced workers to exhaustion, push production lines until machines break down, shipping, receiving, purchasing, and sales are so unsynchronized that orders go unfulfilled, production begins with insufficient or wrong components, and sales takes orders for products that are so far down the back-order queue that the raw materials to make them haven't even been mined, synthesized, or refined.

Thanks for the answer.

 

[kwb377]

I had an early Stevens 5100 (no serial #)...mine had Tennnite stock/forend (an early polymer that was apparently very fragile and prone to breaking into glass-sharp pieces). From my Google research, I believe those were produced from the mid 30's though the late 40's. Yours looks to have wood furniture...those superseded the Tennite models in the late 40's, but I don't remember how long they were produced after that. As mentioned, before the GCA in '68 serial numbers were at the discretion of the manufacturer.