Miroku of Japan, who make the traditionally-styled break-action Brownings, have adopted Brownings date coding system in their serial numbers.

To make complete sense of thing you need a table of letters and years.

Google Italian proof house date codes and you can find tables going back to 1945.

For now, here are the date letter codes for the past 20 years.

Since 1995 a number presented in blocks of digits presents the information like this.

The second two digits identify the type of gun, and 03 indicates a shotgun.

The next sequence of digits is the manufacturers serial number, and the last pair of digits is the year of manufacture (for instance, 98 indicates 1998, and 05 indicates 2005).

Japan does not have a gun barrel proof act, but the MirokuBrowning system is remarkable for its clarity.

The CIPs current membership is 14: Austria, Belgium, Chile, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

Surely it isnt too much to ask all of them to accept clear-language date marking, or is there a limit to just how far international co-operation will go.

As the UK is a signatory of the International Proof Commission (CIP), it recognises the proof marks of every other member state.

For example, this means that a gun with Belgian proof marks can be sold in the UK without being re-proofed because Belgium is a CIP member.

However, as the US has no federated proof system and American makers conduct their own proof tests, US guns must be proofed on arrival in the UK, because the US is not a CIP member.

This can be caused by corrosion, wear, excessive cleaning with abrasive material, or the deliberate removal of metal, for example, when a gun is rebored.

Beretta Date Code Chart