A retired gunsmith offered to sell me his roll marking machine and dies. He has about 10 dies with it, including Winchester, Colt, Remington, sharps and Stevens. Most of these dies came out of the gun factories in the northeast. Would these have any value today? What uses, beside marking replacement barrels, would they have? He priced the dies st $300 each and the machine at $3000.

Checking with my old boss. He just bought a new one so you t may give you an idea. As far as the name brand dies, I would be hesitant to roll Winchester on a Douglas barrel regardless.

Okay. He said he paid over $14K for his machine so that much of the equation my be solved. Guess if it is good operating condition and you need one it might be a good deal.

As for the dies, he couldn't recall but he remembers they weren't cheap. Not much help there.

For personal use only for the markings still with current supported registered Trademarks.
Rolls can be made by any stamp and die company; but they aren't cheap; several hundred $ each.

I'm surprised any firearm manufacturer would let a legit roll stamp with their trademark leave their factories.

Most companies guard their branding like it was Gold at Ft. Knox!

They do; it's just scrap metal. And you can have one made any time you want.

It is not a coincidence that a year or so after they closed the New Haven plant in CT and sold off a lot of stuff, tooling included that ultra rare pre 64 Win model 70's starting popping up everywhere. Those roll stamps make it out of the factories all the time. At one time people had some morals and scruples though.

The original Mauser factory dies, stamps, advertising plates, and other valuables historic stuff was found in a scrap yard ; fortunately it was found. Look in Speed's book on Mauser spotters for the whole story of it. Once a factory closes, no one cares any more. It's all business; no nostalgia then.

Actually, since the advent of the CNC those dies have gotten stupid cheap. I was in a place that used to make my proof mark stamps and some guy was ordering some custom stamps for marking stuff. I noticed the complexity of the stamp he was ordering was about ten times that of my old proof mark and the cost was 1/4 of what I used to pay. I asked the guys why they were so cheap now days? The kid gave me a squint and said: "EDMs work a lot cheaper than engravers."

As far as protectecting trademarked stuff.....

In the past 2 months we have scraped out just over 50 tons of injection plastic molds for Ford, Chrysler, Porter Cable, Briggs, Honda, Dura and GM

All we needed was the email to pitch them and 40+ 90's era molds whent to scrap

Heck......we even threw away a 6-12 Harig, Chairmills Isocut EDM and a water cooled air compressor as big as a pickup truck.

Not to mention any steel that hadn't been used in over 5 years or was considered too small.

5-S is probably how that roll stamp has found it's way into that smiths hands

5S.....seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu, shitsuke