Friend of mine has a .38 Safety Hammerless 4th Model. Family info says that it belonged to his great grandfather who was a constable in one of our litte towns here in the New York boonies. It is a 4 inch bbl ... nickel finish ( more on that in a minute ) and black hard rubber S&W grips.
I took my SCSW over to his place and we looked it up. His ser.# is 2016** , and the catalog says the range is 116003 to 22000 ending in 1907. I told him & showed him in the catalog that I would guess and a very rough guess that it would probably be around 1905. Its in about fair shape and doesn't seem to be a rare example. As to the finish ..... catalog says that nickels had blued trigger guards, and his is nickel like the rest of the gun.
I told him I thought it was really a great old gun and that while there may be quite a few of them this is the only one that belonged to his great grandad. He's kicking around having it refinished and gone over by a gunsmith. Again ... my opinion that it was up to him as it's not terribly collectable that I could see. Either way he's keeping it to pass along ... and I told him that was a great idea. I also said I'd check here to make sure I wasn't giving him a bum steer as to rarity etc.
Anyone that wants to school me up on any of the above would be very welcome by me and I'm sure him when I pass it along.
Thanks.