I recently bought a small lot of vintage cartridge boxes for decor purposes. I got to reading the back of a Western Super X 38 box and was a little surprised at what I saw. It is a little hard to read in the photo so here is a quote:

"Adapted to Smith & Wesson 38-44, Colt Official Police, Officer's Model, Shooting Master, New Service Model, etc. and other modern revolvers designed for high velocity ammunition."

I have no idea what date of this box but it seems to imply to me that only one (or 2) S&W models are capable of handling this ammo while Colt makes a number of "modern" revolvers.

Am I being overly sensitive? Or is Covid fatique setting in?

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Randy
Provenance nerd

38 Special is 38 Special is 38 Special is.....


BTW, nice box.

The “Division of Olin Industries” line on the back places it early post WWII. I’ve seen it referred to as 1945 style. Pre-war Western boxes were simply marked “Western Cartridge Company, East Alton Ill., U.S.A.”. Most of the listed guns are large frame and they do refer to the ammo as “high velocity”.

The Chiefs Special didn’t exist yet. Not sure why they didn’t include the S&W M&P Revolver, the Colt Detective Special/Police Positive Special, or Single Action Army. Perhaps they were worried about the strength of some early guns and decided to cover those with the blanket statement, “... and other modern revolvers”.

...or maybe they simply didn’t have enough room to list them all!

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"I also cook."

I dug out some boxes of period Western .38 Special ammunition, just to show some of the variations in packaging and loads. A few dates to remember:
1944 - Western Cartridge Co became a division of Olin Industries. Very little commercial ammo production during the war, so this marking went into production in 1945.
1954 - Olin merged with Mathieson Chemical Corp.
1962 - Child Safety warning required by federal law.

Left column (top to bottom):
-Western 158 Grain standard velocity prewar box with nickel plated cases. No “Olin Industries” on back.
-Same load in a post-war box, where they crossed off “nickel plated cases”. Marked “division of Olin Industries” on back.
- Same load, where the box was printed without “nickel plated cases”. Still Olin Industries.

Center column:
-Western Super-X 150 grain high velocity post-war box with nickel plated cases. Marked “Olin Industries”.
- Same load, brasses cases. No patent #’s.

Right column:
-Western X (no Super) 158 grain standard velocity marked “Olin Mathieson Chemical Corporation” on back and no child safety warning.
- Same box with child safety warning.

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Here’s a few other interesting boxes of ammo, just for fun. Prewar Western .357 and Winchester .38 Special and a post 1962 box of Western .357 AP ammo.

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"I also cook."

To the initial question, I believe the only S&W that was designed for the high velocity ammo was that 38-44, not including the .357 revolver. The M&P wasn't designed for it at that time.

The 38-44 includes the Outdoorsman and the Heavy Duty and the 4 colts were .41 frame in dfixed sights and without and the same in the .45 frames..........

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dd884
JMHO-YMMV