I snapped a couple of pictures of AA headstamps today while taking a break fron snow blowing. Four degrees on the deck this morning. Supposed to have the - sign tomorrow morning. At any rate, the early AAs had the brand name spelled out and the AA logo on the head stamp --

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...esterbrand.jpg

A while later as Olin was moving towards consolidating their two ammunition lines they went to the W - W head stamp --

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...Wheadstamp.jpg

And by the way, what ever those red shells are in front of the AA box in the first picture, those aren't the shells that started life in that box!

Who would have thought that, some day, we would be studying the originality of plastic collectable shotgun shells. By the way, the Remington Shur Shots are the first generation of standard velocity plastic shells. The burned in center of the crimp was a short lived procedure. They followed the original 1961 high velocity version by a bit, but I don't know by how long. I have none of this in my shotshell collection. I thought I would be long gone before such discussions took place.

How right you are Dave, very observant you are . :)
The one box I kind of got screwed over on. :mad:
Honestly I really don’t think the seller of this box had a clue as to what was in it.
I learned a big “note to self”, always open the box and see what’s inside if possible. ;)

Can anyone enlighten me as to what these Mark 5’s are, and when they were made?

http://i99.photobucket.com/albums/l3...tshells2LR.jpg

The Mark 5 was introduced in 1962 in a variety of Winchester and Western paper shells. "Mark 5" was a polyethylene collor around the shot.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...5intro1962.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...rk5wadding.jpg

Winchester and Western pastic shells were introduced in 1964. I showed the page for the compression formed shells above, but they also introduced Poly-Formed cases which were a plastic tube with the fiber base wads for the Winchester Ranger and the Western Xpert shells --

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...rmedshells.jpg

It appears these are what are in your AA box. Olin continued to offer the Ranger and Xpert Mark 5 shells in paper and poly-formed cases thru the end of the 1960s, but the paper offerings were becoming less. In 1971 the Ranger and Xpert were gone, replaced by the compression formed Upland shell in both Winchester and Western brand. IMHO the compression formed Upland was one of the nicest upland shells ever offered. I shot a load of them in 16-gauge for Doves during the years I lived in Virginia. I'm still loading the hulls.