I've had a bizarre (some would say) fascination with locks (especially padlocks) since I was a boy and have over time collected a few that I found significant or interesting. I'm not a locksmith by trade although perhaps I should have been as it's a field that I find fascinating.Anyway, just wondering if anybody out there knows what the numbers stamped on the casings of some of the old Chubb padlocks (such as the Cruiser and Battleship) relate to? I recently was lucky enough to find what I believe to be a very early model Cruiser for sale which I snapped up before somebody else did, it has the number '959' stamped on the rear. I always thought that this number possibly related to a year of production, so in this case thought that it could mean it was made in 1959. However, it's not as simple as that as I've seen other Cruisers with numbers such as '378' on them for example so my original reasoning cannot be correct. I then wondered if it could be a month/ year code, so in the case of 378 this could be March 1978 but I'm doubtful that this is the case as I've only ever seen 3 digit numbers on the casings meaning that if this was correct, Chubb never made any of these locks in the last three months of the year (being months 10,11 and 12 respectively which would require a 4 digit code for month and year which I've never seen on these padlocks). So now I'm thinking that the number is just a batch number or perhaps a batch/ year combination- taking '378' as the example this would mean batch number 3 of 1978.
Can anybody shed any light on this? If I've not bored you to death with my post, thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any input you can give!
Regards,
Paul