I was looking at an old thread on a 1962 Browning Explorer that mangonboat (Mark) picked up and noticed something very interesting about the serial numbers.

jazz5833 (Jim) also posted a pic of a Gordon Duke and I posted a picture of a Royal Huntsman in the same thread.

Here's what I wrote in the other thread.

"Brought this thread back up as I had a bit of an "AAH-HA!!" moment.

I wonder if Gordon didn't give their bows a sequential build number in 1961 (just before the sale to Browning) but just gave them a month and year made.

My Royal Huntsman is 961, so September 1961.

Jim's Duke is 661, so June 1961.

Mark's bow is 1261, so December 1961.

When I look at older Gordon's the pattern is there.

My Gordon King is 659752. So, June 1959 and the 752nd bow that month.

My Gordon Knight is 759698, so July 1959 and 698th bow that month.

They look very similar in build and design, which fits with them having the same year.

If I can get some more numbers I can test the theory.

I am also going to start another thread."

And this is that thread.

Please post some Gordon serial numbers and a picture of the bow they are on and I will see if that pattern fits.

Cheers! Pete

Don't own any Gordon bows but regarding the serial number hypothesis of yours I doubt that the made 6-700 bows of a particular model per month. Rather I say that it was a running total of the bows made to date of that particular model.

Hi Kelly:

I did not make myself clear.

When we figured out the Shakespeare codes we concluded that the total was total production for all models that month.

I assummed the same for Gordon as I submit the total output would be more useful than model production overall.

Pete,

That's exactly the way I always knew the numbers to work.

My Gordon Plastics King s/n 7591394.

July 1959 1394th made that year. (Possibly a running number since the beginning)

Here are mine:

759456 Clan Gordon Knight

159174 Gordon Plastics Inc. Knight (Left Hand)

758724 Gordon Plastics Inc. King

661 Clan Gordon Duke

958370 Gordon Plastics Inc. Prince

961 Clan Gordon Royal Huntsman

85990 Gordon Plastics Inc. Jester

15845 Gordon Plastics Inc. Page

1258405 Gordon Plastics Inc. Page (Left Hand)

1057114 Gordon Plastics Inc. No Model

860628 Clan Gordon Queen

960219 Clan Gordon Custom (Left Hand)

Well that was simple... Gordon used month, date and number built up to 1960.

in 1961, just before Browning took over, they stopped using sequential numbers and just used the month and the year. I can only assume they knew they would be getting out of bow building so why keep track?

My Royal Huntsman was also 961 (September 1961.) The first Browning bows were 1962.

Dave Ross and mangonboat have the oldest Browning Explorers (in fact the earliest Brownings) that I have seen, likely built the same day when they first started manufacturing.

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