My Latest Vintage Shotshell Acquisition.

[Researcher]

Richard,

I have several boxes of paper AA's in boxes like that.

What are you talking about. The Winchester/Western AA was introduced as a compression formed plastic shell with a one-piece plastic wad in 1965. Winchester/Western introduced their compression formed hull with Mark 5 wadding in 1964 --



The AA was introduced in 1965 in 12-gauge trap loads and 12- and 20-gauge Skeet loads --



In the early years the Winchester branded AAs came in a white box with the AA logo in red and the Western branded AAs came in the white box with the AA logo in yellow.

1970 saw the introduction of the .410-bore AA shell and the 28-gauge AA was introduced in May 1971. The AA was still marketted under both of Olin's ammunition company names. For 1972 they added the black Handicap Trap AAs. In 1975 Olin began easing away from the two seperate ammunition lines and the white boxes began being marked Winchester-Western and the AA logo was red.



That same year they dropped the Super Speed heavy loads and both Winchester and Western branded heavy hunting loads were called Super-X. Oh the shame of it!!!

[Mike Stahle]

Tensile strength to 35,000 psi
Perfect for twist and Damascus barrels, heck
you don't even need a Barrel...

[Mike Stahle]

Ooops! Now I did it. I used the P word with the D & T words = “silence”

[Researcher]

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 --



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



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!

[Bill Murphy]

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.

[Mike Stahle]

Originally Posted by Dave Noreen

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 --



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



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!

How right you are Dave, very observant you are .
The one box I kind of got screwed over on.
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?

[Researcher]

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.





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 --



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.