I just reached into a box of 50 bmg ammo and came up with five diffrent headstamp markings anyone know what they mean?
TW4
EMZ84
.50 FNB85
TW35
12.7x99 MKE12-64

TW is Twin Cities

EMZ is Netherlands (Dutch)

FNB is FN

MKE is Turkish

The dates after them are the years made.

Quoted: I just reached into a box of 50 bmg ammo and came up with five diffrent headstamp markings anyone know what they mean? TW4  Twin Cities Ordnance Plant, Minneapolis, MN EMZ84 Eurometaal-Zaandam. Zaandam, Netherlands .50 FNB85 Fabrique Nationale Herstal, Herstal, Belgium TW35  Twin Cities Ordnance Plant, Minneapolis, MN 12.7x99 MKE12-64 Makina ve Kimya Endustrisi, Kurumu, Turkey

guess that means all this stuff is corosive. what is the good head stamps to look for?

It depends if the stuff has been remanufactured, if it has been then more then likely it's had the primers replaced with good ones.

If they haven't been remanufactured then the only ones that wouldn't be would probably be the FN rounds. As far as the others I'm not sure, the TW ones will be for sure but the EMZ and MKE are to hard to tell as they're foreign made. You could shoot them, you'll just need to clean accordingly when you get home from the range.

Do you want to sell a couple? I don't have a loaded EMZ or MKE in my collection. You can PM me here or email me at [email protected]

As far as good headstamps goes, you'll want anything past 1952 if it's American. Foreign stuff is to hard to tell, the Yugo/Bosnian (IK headstamp) was found to be mildly corrosive. It took 10 days to show signs of rust when it was tested but it did show up. There's just to many headstamps out there, if you have any questions about it just post it.

Sorry 50-Shooter, the stuff I did not Shoot I took back to the gun shop and exchanged before I read this thread or I would have gladly given you the rounds.