My new/old remy 870

back before where my family came from in IL was chicago suberbs my grandparents and their kids used to shoot skeet and hunt quail.

Sometime in the god i don't know 60's or 70's my aunt bought a remington wingmaster 870 12 ga.
Later sometime in the 80's she got divorced her ex wound up w/ my grandmothers old skeet gun and she got the 870, i think she got gypped as whatever my grandmother used to shoot has got to be an antique by now.

one time when i was about 10 or 12 and we were up visiting my father took us up to WIS somewhere to visit one of his old high school buddies who now lived up there. So i ended up tagging along w/ their teenagers as they went trap shooting that night.

I told my parents i wanted to try that, so my dad got my aunts old 870 and took me out to the skeet range on NAS pensacola. I think i remember putting about 2 rounds thru it before the range master got out the 20 ga for me to use (12ga is a good bit of gun for a 12 year old, even one at the borderline weight limit for his litttle leauge football division).

One month later Desert Storm and no guns aloowed to be brought on base, and we never went back.

SO it sat in my parents garage untill about 3 months ago when i asked if i could take it. Next day I took it to the range/shop and had the gunsmith I know there show me how to break it all the way down and he showed me how to get the minor surface rust off w/ som 0000 steelwool and gunoil. He also gave me the ok to testfire it as it looked pretty good, and he even gave me 3 shells to go into the range and pop off.

that makes about 5 rounds and no cleaning in 15 years for anyone doing the math :lol:

Tonight I finally got around to breaking it down and cleaning it up (big day for unfinished projects around chefy's household).

Man this thing is now SMOOTH and looks beautiful the only rust was very minor surface rust and after cleaning you need to hold it to the light just right to see where it was, and you still can't feel it w/ your fingers.

Now a little net search brought up a thread on THR about dating 870's. There is a code on the barrell (i believe everything on this gun is original) that gives the month and year of production by letters, the letters on this one are LDT.

I know the first letter L indicates FEB, and the second letter tells the year and after a certain point they started going into 2 letters for the year but I can't find anything on what year the DT corresponds to.

does anyone know, or know where i can look it up (i think the original THR thread referenced the BB of values as having a table).

Also does anyone know what the possible value might be (I'm keeping it if my aunt says she doesn't want it back, but I'd like to know). I know they are the most produced shotgun in the world so probably not teriibly collectible, unless it is somekind of limited variation, but no markings show anything like that sio i think it is the plain jane model.

and lastly it holds 2+1 2.75" shells. Breaking down the magazine area (is it still called a magazine in a shotgun?) reveals that there is a little wooden plug kinda like a baseball bat about 6 inches long that seems to serve no purpose but to limit it to two shells in the mag. Is there any reason not to chop an inch off this as it can ALMOST hold 3+1?

thanks for any input as i have ZERO long gun experience of any kind.