Let me bring this thread out of retirement with some more evidence. I won these stocks several days ago in one of Lee's Ebay auctions.
On the right inside surface is the stamped three-digit number 127.
But if you look above the stamp and the screw hole, you will see a six-digit number in pencil that starts 611. I think the three following blurry digits are the same as the stamped digits -- 127.
So here's another set of large-medallion K-frame service stocks numbered in the 611xxx range. Guns with serial numbers a little higher shipped as early as 1931 and as late as the mid-1930s. The earliest date that one of the 611xxx guns could have shipped is not clear, but might be 1930.
That's pretty close to the end of the medallion-free 1920s era, and I wonder if the large medallion service stocks on K-frames might be the first of the stocks with reintroduced medallions in the 1930s. For whatever reason (splitting wood and ruined stocks? Simple availability from the supplier?), the large medallions were quickly dispensed with and the smaller medallions were used in service stocks until Magnas displaced them as the standard stocks on S&W revolvers a few years later.
The K-22 was not yet in production when the 611xxx guns were being produced. The lowest serial number for a K-22 OD is about 20,000 higher.
I wonder if any .32-20 HEs were equipped with large medallion stocks. I have never heard of one, and I suspect that all the guns on which these distinctive stocks were installed were .38 M&Ps. It would be interesting to know if they were all square butts, or if some round butt stocks were produced with large medallion inserts.
If anyone else has serial numbers to offer that bear on this question, please post them. We seem to have heard of earlier large medallion guns in the 610xxx range, but there has been no reference yet to these stocks on guns numbered in the 612xxx range.
