Again, where do you get your info? They did not contract out any engraving until I left. After that Nick, Jasper and I still did outside engraving for the factory. If you want to know how it really works for outside contract I can tell you.
As far as the Custom Shop, if a customer wanted someone outside of the factory to engrave their gun the factory would accommodate them. They would prep the gun and send it to whoever was going to engrave it, and I mean whoever. This could be a talented engraver or it could be the customer's backwoods nephew who could barely cut a stick figure. The gun would be returned and finished at the factory. It would be specifically notated in the work order that it was outside contract. If the engraving was not good the company did not want responsibility for it. There were alot of good outside engravers, some have been mentioned in the comments above, but there were some not so good engravers. The bottom line to serious collectors is having a total factory engraved Model 21 by a Winchester factory engraver. Those guns will always bring the highest premiums.

They are NOT factory letters because they DO NOT come from the FACTORY. The FACTORY is long gone. The letters come from CODY using the factory records that they have.

No your wrong! The records came from the factory and were sent to Cody and they make you a copy of the original Factory records if they have them.

What if they don't? I heard that a lot of the Winchester records were destroyed in a fire.

Of course you are right that the RECORDS come from the factory but the LETTER comes from Cody not the factory which hasn’t existed in almost 20 years