This has probably been discussed before, so I apologize if it has , I haven’t seen it yet.
Some years back they changed 16 ga hull color to purple to reduce the chance of confusing them with 12. So 410, 28 were red, 16 purple, 20 yellow and 12 red. But in recent years I’ve acquired 12’s in a variety of colors including blue and I believe some black. Now I have 16’s that are also blue and some black. Not that it’s an issue to me, just a matter of curiosity why they did this again?

For many years there was only one 16 gauge hull that was purple, the Federal. There have been other companies, all euro stuff, that use purple hulls for the 16, but only a few. Winchester and Remington never had purple hulls, at least that I know of and I started reloading in 1974.

Interesting, thank you for the response.

So there as good discussion related to color schemes on this forum that dates back to 2008, Obviously I missed it till now. Hopefully I can learn how to navigate the forums better.

In 1960 Federal introduced Yellow for 20 gauge and Purple for 16 gauge.
Most manufacturers followed shortly thereafter with yellow 20 gauge, but few with 16 gauge.

I have Active 16ga hulls that are RED in color

I have a ton of Winchester/Western AACF 20ga hulls that are red

I still have a handful of old paper 20 ga hulls, red ones are Win, green ones are REM.

In American manufacture there was a basic hull color standardization. The 20 gauge being yellow was a safety issue. Purple 16’s never really caught on except for Federal. The other gauge hull colors were more to differentiate manufacturers than anything else. Red for Winchester. Green for Remington. Blue for Peters and dark red for Federal. There were even deviations in that; silver AA’s etc. But basically that lasted for a long time until European shells started to become more common here. Now about the only universal standard hull color is yellow in the 20’s.

I once found a red-hulled 20 gauge shell on my local skeet field. I have it as a keepsake since it's kinda rare to find 20 in anything other than yellow.

I used to shoot red, blue, and black-hulled 16 ga shells through my 11-48.

Also, if you bring in the RST short-chambered shells, these go completely off the board as to what you would expect.

Thanks for the response, the 16 ga is relatively new to me. I recently came across some win 16 ga that I had in storage that are red and concluded that they must be 20-30 years old. Outside of internet sales ( now practically unavailable) I doubt there is a Winchester 16 ga shell available within 200 miles of me. Now I know a bit more and like I said before, I learn something new everyday on this forum.

Those must be about 50 years old.

At least

True, but they STILL reload nicely!

Yes they do

One day Winchester will make the AA 410s in a bright color so us red green color blind types can find them on the ground

Hint hint. Like yellow. Bright green. White Orange. Blah blah

To my knowledge, the only gauge that truly is color coded is the 20 ga. Unless the hull predates the standardization, they ALL will be yellow. I recently came across a box of black 16 ga. shells.

I think that Remington still makes those black 16 ga shells

It was Fed in 1960 that started the yellow 20's, and purple 16's.

The yellow only for 20 caught on with the rest of the manufacturers shortly after, so if you have non yellow 20 gauge hulls, then such would pre-date before 1963 if not Fed of 1960.

As for the purple only 16's, never really caught on with the rest of the manufacturers since it was less of a problem than the 20 in a 12 gauge gun that would stop at the bore/forcing cone to block the bore/allow a 12 gauge round to be loaded on top of the it, and lets face it, the gauge was falling out of favor by the late 60's since it was not one of the skeet gauges, nor a gauge that had any kind of value boxing of ammo either. So by the late 60, it was either a Browning Sweet 16 if you want a decent gun (that was going to cost you), or the cheap bolt action shotguns that really was the stable for it's need around the time instead (couldn't swing a cat in a gun shop without hitting one of the used 16 gauge bolt action guns, since they where begin sold off by the droves and replace with 20 gauges since the ammo was much cheaper to get a youth shooter started.

By the 70's, Fio was already producing light purple 12 gauge hull rounds, while rem tended to stay with it's black hulls, while win tended to stayed with it's red hulls.

As for across the pound with the 32 gauge, that one was also a rainbow of colors, depending on the ammo manufacturer.

So to sum it up, it was early 60's when all manufacturers produced only yellow hull 20's forward, while the rest of the gauges, rainbow of colors (but not yellow) from the different manufactures isntead.

Too add, can tells a shooters age by a simple question, Being if they have every owns a 16 gauge bolt gun, and how long that had it before it broke (how worn out the gun was, by the time they got it).