Got questions about the Factory Records Services? Ask here!

Yes. If a gun club on a military base was the entity to which the gun was originally shipped it is so listed in the Sako records. There are several different rod & gun clubs which were located on U.S. military bases listed in the records.

There are no "mistakes" in the records created by the copying process (microfiche, actually). No serial number or date was changed due to copying. The legibility of a date or a number might be subject to interpretation, just as any handwritten number is, but nothing in the copying of the records (which was done by Sako factory personnel) in any way altered anything. The images are sharp and clear.

Also, there are no missing pages. All records begin at the beginning and are demonstrably complete and in order up until the point that they end. The "completeness" of the records depends on the company's record keeping; not on how they might have been copied or reproduced. They are as complete and accurate as Sako made them, no more, no less. If a serial number in the inspection records has a blank beside it then the number likely had not been used at the time the records were copied. Or for some reason it had not been recorded in the master ledger (Defective receiver discarded? Used for experiment or prototype? Misplaced, stolen, or otherwise not in the records chain? Who knows?)

As Topgear says, when you order the factory records for a rifle you get a copy of the actual ledger page on which that rifle is recorded. This is all the Sako factory has, and, so far as anyone knows, all that exists.

On the other hand, it would be a huge prize if the distributor's records of Firearms International, Garcia, and Stoeger were available (as well as D.W. Custer and the larger European distributors of Sakos). Those would help verify the Sakos which those distributors handled and perhaps show when and where each Sako was shipped after its imporation. Also, wouldn't it be great to have the records of Colt, H&R, H&H, Browning, Sears, Marlin, Anschutz, Magnum Research, Montgomery Ward, North America Arms, Imperial Arms, Winslow, O'brien, and all of the others who produced rifles on the Sako action? (By the way, Colt Factory Letters are NOT available on Colt-Sako rifles. We've made requests and been told that records don't exist.)

No one at the Sako Collectors Club is holding the Sako Factory Records out to be anything they are not. What they are is the most accurate and valuable source of information on Sakos from the 1930's to the 1970s which exists anywhere. We feel incredibly lucky to have them and are proud to make them available to our members for their use as they see fit.

 

Yes, you'll get a copy of the ledger page with a Level 1 request.