What is the manufacture date of a beretta 12 gauge silver lark shot gun serial number 008745?

Answer 1

Beretta firearms produced in Italy carry a proof mark for the year of production. The chart below is used to identify the year by this mark. For recent pistols this mark is usually located on the frame near the trigger guard, for older pistols, the mark is on the slide or on the frame behind the grip area. Shotguns have this mark stamped on the barrel near the chamber. You may need to remove the barrel to read the mark. On some older firearms, produced between 1925 to1954, the actual date was stamped instead of a code mark. In this case the date can be located near the test proof marks on the frame. The exception to this occured during the regime of Benito Mussolini. The Italian Proof House used a roman numeral system marking the year of his reign which began with "I" in 1922. The first Beretta firearm using this dating system was the Model 1934 pistol (introduced in 1935), thus the year was indicated as XIII (usually marked on the slide) and refering to the 13th year of Mussolini's regime. This practice ended in 1945 with XXIII at the close of World War Two and the chart below takes up from that point. It should be noted that some wartime production firearms were void of any marking to indicate the production date. We have also seen markings where roman and numerical figures are combined, for example XX7 for 1971, XX8 for 1972 and XX9 for 1973. MARK YEAR I or 1 1945 II or 2 1946 III or 3 1947 IV or 4 1948 V or 5 1949 VI or 6 1950 VII or 7 1951 VIII or 8 1952 IX or 9 1953 X 1954 XI 1955 XII 1956 XIII 1957 XIV 1958 XV 1959 XVI 1960 XVII 1961 XVIII 1962 XIX 1963 XX 1964 XXI 1965 XXII 1966 XXIII 1967 XXIV 1968 XXV 1969 XXVI 1970 XXVII or XX7 1971 XXIII or XX8 1972 XXIX or XX9 1973 XXX 1974 AA 1975 AB 1976 AC 1977 AD 1978 AE 1979 AF 1980 AH 1981 AI 1982 AL 1983 AM 1984 AN 1985 AP 1986 AS 1987 AT 1988 AU 1989 AZ 1990 BA 1991 BB 1992 BC 1993 BD 1994 BF 1995 BH 1996 BI 1997 BL 1998 BM 1999 BN 2000 BP 2001 BS 2002 BT 2003 BU 2004 BZ 2005 CA 2006 CB 2007