M1903 NM MADE IN 1918

[cplstevennorton]

I do not know where they came from, but many of the old SHT receivers were available on the commercial market before WWII
FWIW

Both the Army and Marines actually had auctions of scrap receivers at different points of time post WWI through about the 20's. But then they noticed civilian companies weren't using them as scrap steal, (what the govt thought they were being sold as) but were actually building functional rifles out of them.

So they started to destroy them instead. In fact there is one document from the late 20's that I have somewhere, where the Army was making a big stink out of the ones they had sold at auction previous, showing up in the commercial market scrubbed of all markings. It was a letter basically stating we never again will trust anyone to sell stuff that isn't demilled properly.