Have a couple of Glocks and would like to determine the date of manufacture and what generation they are? Anyone know of a site I could review to determine their history?
A long time ago I emailed my Glock SN to an address that would reply w/ the date of manufacture. I'm sorry, I no longer remember it or if they still do it.
Posts: 7519 | Location: MI | Registered: May 22, 2007
The Glocktalk Forum used to have a stickie where readers could enter model number and serial number information. It goes back to the very earliest days of Glock in the US. You can get close to a build date. You can find detailed descriptions on the Web of the features of each generation. No finger grooves = gen 1, 2, or 5. Finger grooves = gen 3 or 4. Removable back straps = gen 4. Lots of other little details accompany those general descriptions for each gen. And don’t forget the gen 3 fish gills.
Posts: 77 | Location: Northern Virginia | Registered: May 30, 2016
The GlockTalk threads are pretty good at defining the build timeline for individual guns. Not as great as the "birthday" info that SIG now uses straight from the factory, but these are still useful in narrowing the possible build date for most any Glock.
As for this generational stuff: not to complicate things (but I guess I am), there have been some "tweener generation" classifications that have shown up over the decades. To my knowledge these weren't official designations from Glock but have been somewhat commonly used by enthusiasts of the brand to tie down significant variations that don't quite fit the traditional definition (described characteristics) of each formal "generation" build. The most common one that someone might come across is "Gen 2.5", where later build Gen2 frames started commonly showing up with a third cross pin, a somewhat significant structural update to the firearm design. Over the decades there have been other attempts to better pigeonhole the build timeline/sequence of variations that Glock came up with. For instance, early on some owners/purveyors of the RTF2 guns tried referring to those guns as 'Gen 3.5' rather than simply 'RTF2', probably because the former fit more nice and tidy in the whole generational classifying thingy, but as far as I know that effort never really took hold among a wider audience. RTF2 is just RTF2, at least it is for me.
Something similar happened with the front slide serration variants that showed up with Glock's so-called 'summer gun' configuration within the Gen4 production timeline. That too never really caught on since it seemed clear that Glock themselves didn't use this sort of sub-generation type of classification. These were simply limited-production variations and they left it at that. And the same sort of sub-generation nonsense was bandied about--the internet is such a great place, isn't it?--when Glock started making changes to the Gen5 guns to address mostly aesthetic complaints (frame beveling to match the new slide bevel at the muzzle end, etc.). The same sort of frivolous generational chatter that the P365 has been through when SIG issued revisions to fix that gun's early issues.
-MG
Posts: 2268 | Location: The commie, rainy side of WA | Registered: April 19, 2020
GLOCKCustomerService@glock.us has a pretty fast response time to emailed questions.
Bruce
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Posts: 4251 | Location: AK-49 | Registered: October 06, 2011