Bad Morning at Fazakerly in early 1953

[Lance]

Just received a new toy in the mail, not exactly what I wanted (I was hoping for a '49, '50' or '56 conversion year, still looking if anyone has one), but she is all matching.

Why the bad morning, check out the s/n. What is the first character, a "Y", a "F" or something else? Did the guy engraving miss his morning coffee and slip?

Well he did it now...... what to do???? He decides that he will repeat the not a real letter on the magazine and the bolt. But what to do on the forend??? I guess, just plonk both letters down and let it slide.

Of interest is that the 1942 BSA Shirly s/n lightly engraved into the butt socket under the black paint is not even close to the engraved s/n! The socket has a heavily stamped "E" and then a lightly scratched 69427; which is not a real BSA s/n?

For the record, I am recording the s/n as YF in my BATF log; hope they understand. Plus I looked up Greek, Korean, Chinese and Japanese letters and could not find a match. Any clues out there??

Information

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[Frederick303]

I seem to recall that the Y F combined into one letter meant the rifle went through a rebuild and had a new serial number assigned to it. The Y and F overlapping is correct, not a mistake. I also have one with such a marking, though the date and serial number I do not recall, I will check tonight.

My recollection is that information was published in the old Enfield collectors digest,and that Peter Laidler was the one who wrote the article. Perhaps he will write in with a more complete answer. In any case I will check my exampel tonight, as I seem to recall it was a 1952 or 1953 dated example.

[krinko]

I have one of these, dated 1950----the FY monogam scratched into my receiver is not repeated on the bolt, magazine or forend, which are all stamped with only the "Y".
It's a fairly scarce marking variation and certainly of interest to a No4 collector for that reason, you did well.
-----krinko