Unless even owner of every bearcat out there called in and reported their particular guns, much like Chad has been doing and trying to do, you'd be able to come up with a dividing line, base line.remember the vast majority of Ruger owners are NOT collectors, do NOT belong to any collecting group, either the RCA or ROCS, let alone subscribe to Chads RENE to even be concerned or care about the 'scratches' ( numbers on the end of their cylinders, heck we see them ALL the time at any given gun show, and the cylinder in the gun does NOT 'match' that gun, especially in the case of convertibles, they ONLY care that is feeds,fires and functions. test fire and ship it out.IF there was any issue problems, or need to go back through the system and to 'keep the parts together' they would be marked, possibly, may not.
Back to my comment above, up until the 'convertibles' there was NO reason to 'have to, need to' UNLESS it was for a service, refinish or other some such event needing to 'keep the parts' together for any particular gun.all the fitting was normally done at the 'fitting ' bench, pick up parts from a bin, fit them, and build a gun.
