Wow... I'd have jumped at it... lol. LOVELY. I'm so glad that there's a bunch of us 'saving the oldies' so to speak.

Like your 'quilt inspector' on your avatar picture!

I have seen postings with the actual date of "birth" given. Where do you look to determine that? My serial # had an allotment of 8000 on 11/11/1936 and the next allotment of 201's was 3/17/1937 so would I just assume I fall between those dates?

Gosh, I don't know who the other person was...

In thinking about the war time history... I thought of maybe calling her "Rosie" after the famous "Rosie the Riveter" War Effort posters. But then I thought about one of Bob Hope's female sidekicks of USO fame: singer Frances Langford. Frances Langford went on to marry the heir to Evenrude (I think) engines and settled here in Florida, not to far away from where my husband and I live. Francis... eh hem.... or "Ms Langford"???? Francis Langford was known for having that elusive quality called, "class". Well, this machine has a touch of class too... or she will after I get her cleaned up.

The date on singers site (if those are the S/N's you're looking at) are allotment dates. As I understand it, that's the date that that particular allotment was 'started'... But, in answer to the 'ending' date portion of your question, I believe they manufactured different machines in batches. So the end date of possible manufacture of your 201, is not the date of the next batch of 201's, but the next date of the very next batch, no matter what kind of machine it was. Note that the S/N's were simply assigned in sequencial order no matter what type, kind of machine it was.

There's a lot of folks who simply reference the allotment start date as the exact birthdate of their machine. Not necessarily so. In fact, likely not. That new to me 15-91 I just got, has an allotment date of 3/2/42. My actual S/N falls towards the middle of that run, therefore it probably wasn't produced exactly on the 2nd. But I can tell based on the next batch's allotment date, that my machine rolled off the factory lines in the month of March of 1942... even if I can't pinpoint the exact date it would have done so.

All ya'all correct me if I'm wrong now...

[quote=vintagemotif]If it helps, I have a 66-6 from 1926 with a side clamp and my neighbor has a 66-1 Red head (red eye) with a side clamp also. Which astonished me.... but she says that she's never 'messed with tha thing' so it's unlikely it was changed out.

That makes more sense now! Thanks :-)

I'm still high from getting my 'fix' today. Went to an auction and came home with a 1902 Singer Model 27 in a unique oak cabinet (in good shape) a few little pit marks on the head but my paint pen will take care of them. Not sure what the decals are. She's dirty but everything moves freely. Best part is tucked away in one of the drawers was one of the oak puzzel boxes full of the original attachments for this machine. There were 200 alloted April 7, 1902. I'm a happy camper just wonder where I'm gonna put the old gal.....

She sewed with the Betsy Ross, so I can't imagine it being a toy machine.

Nancy, I am envious, I want one too. I am looking forward to pictures on this one. Kathie