Pre-1918 BSA & Lincoln Jeffries air rifles 

There follows an abridged list of serial numbers of pre-WW1 BSA and Lincoln Jeffries rifles, based on the comprehensive list in John Knibb's book BSA and Lincoln Jeffries Air Rifles: A Concise Illustrated History of Their Development and Manufacture, 1904-18. Mr Knibbs drew up his list from entries in the original factory ledgers.

This list will be of assistance in narrowing down the age of your rifle. For a much more detailed record of your rifle's manufacture and despatch from the factory, please refer to the above book or, for the actual day the gun left the factory, contact John Knibbs International, but it will cost you UK£25 for the information.

Vintage BSAs 1919-1939 

John Knibbs, who owns the BSA factory ledgers, didn't include a list of serial numbers for the post-1919 BSA air rifles in his book The Golden Century (copyright John Knibbs 2002).

The reason was that the serial numbers were not issued in chronological order, so the following information SHOULD BE TREATED WITH CAUTION!!!

Two sources of date identification have been published, apparently before the uncertainty mentioned above was understood, by Dennis Hiller in his book Air Rifles and by P J Colman in his articles in Guns Review. The Hiller ones take the format "Model, Maker, Date"):

Light patterns "L" and "A"

Club ("CS" and "C") and Standard .22 cal ("S" and "T" patterns)

Breakdown pattern

BSA airgun prefix codes 

Courtesy of John Knibbs International