I'm in the process of looking for a Smith 1911, 108284. I've seen pictures of some guns that have the bill board "S&W 1911" in big letters on the left side of the slide. Some have the same information in smaller text. I'm wanting the small text version, is there a date or time when they changed? Do I need to ask for a particular date? Any help would be appreciated.

I think the billboards were last shown in the 2004 S&W catalogues.

The "Billboards" were the 1st run of the S&W 1911s and 2004 is right on the money I believe. I own two and these were probably the best 1911s S&W ever produced. Briley match barrels with the rest of the parts supplied by Wilson Combat, Nowlin, McCormick and Texas Armament. When S&W saw what a success they had they turned to in-house production of all parts.

Very interesting! I've passed on a couple of the billboard models because I thought they might not be as good as the current production. Thanks very much for the info!