.401 Winchester?

[G-Man WC]

I've been into guns and reading about them since I was a kid. I've been a member of the NRA since the 70's
and geek'ed out on the obscure articles of odd and obscure firearms in there magazines. Never in my life have I heard of this cartridge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Model_1910

My friends grandpa passed. The family found a lot of old ammo (rifle, pistol, shotgun) that they wanted gone.
I told him I was the man for this task and made a quick hour long drive to the south bay on Christmas morning
to find out what the ammo secrets that gramps garage cabnet held. I found 8 boxes of assorted 12 and 20ga trap and heavy loads, 1-box 32acp.
The bulk of the find was 9 boxes of .401 Win
6boxes-Remington Kleanbore, 1box-Winchester, 2-boxes Peters Rustlessammo. All unfired factory ammo.
After doing some quick research, the ammo turns out to be kind of rare.
The kicker is that the guy had some four round mags also in the box, which are more rare than the ammo that they stopped making in the 50's.
-g

[Capybara]

Wow, I have never even heard of that caliber but there are a ton of old, obscure calibers and cartridges out there. Very nice, may be worth some money to a cartridge collector.

[VegasND]

Cool find and a chance to learn a little history.

It's too bad they didn't give you a rifle to go with it. I've handled but never fired the Winchester .351 and .401 rifles -- ammo comes pretty dear.

You ought to be able to make a few bucks off of it to pay you for your time and gas.

[TRAP55]

Made for the Winchester Model 10 self loader, Winchester discontinued both around 1936 or so. Somebody with a Model 10 is surely looking for that ammo.
Interesting, just reading that Wikipedia link, I never knew about the French and Russian military contracts. I know some cartridge collectors that put a value on that ammo for you. Are those mags 6rnd mags? They'll probably bring more than the ammo. I would be asking what happened to the rifle.

[Mike A]

I'd try to sell that ammo by the box on one of the online auctions, as collector's cartridges. It is not common at all and there are plenty of collectors of Winchesters out there who may want to have a box of shells to go with their rifle.

Just as an aside, anybody who has ever fired a .401/Model 1910 will tell you what a ***** it is to shoot. Even the .351 isn't exactly a treat, but the .401 is brutal for extended firing.

You can see why the .30 Carbine was based on the original .32 WSL instead of the heavier calibers. And "Carbine" Williams and Winchester came up with a much more practical weapon in the M1 Carbine than ANY of their earlier blowback semi-autos. Just my opinion, but based on firing several boxes in all of them but the .35WSL. And looking for the brass which they toss about 3 miles and mangle into the bargain (in fairness, I suspect about 99% of WSL shooters had no intention of reloading!).

A great find, and a neat story.