I have owned a pre 29 44 mag for over 30 years . it has a set of rounded edged magna style grips and a serial nimber that has an "S" prefix. I was told it is a very early gun but I know very little about it. It has a wide trigger ,wide hammer, white outline rear sight and red insert front. It has never been altered in any way.What do I have? the serial is 180060 and im told it was the 60th gun off the production line. Can any one verify or refute this. Im not a collector. The gun has a pinned barrel and a recessed cylinder. If more info is needed, I can dig it out of the safe. It is blued.

Welcome to the Forum Bob!
- your four screw, 44 magnum should have target stocks from the factory.
I'd guess your gun is 1958ish. Your gun was the 60th off the production line.........after serial number 180000
They started regular production/sales in early 1956. There are many many guns before yours.

Hey, we LIKE PICTURES!

Yes,

we like pics here! VM is spot on here. My nickel pre 29 is S 1768XX and shiped in March of '58 according to Mr. Jinks.

I gave you a welcome over in the nickel gun thread, but will say so here too-
Welcome to the forum!

BTW- this should be posted over in the 1896-1961 forum, so I asked the mods to move it for you.

Its been moved with a few days of redirect

Dan

Thanks Dan,
I figured he'd get more responses over here.

There are others here than know a lot more about this than I do but .44 mags started at S130000 in January of '56 and had 5 screws. Four screws started at about S167XXX.

S&W serial numbers can be misleading. Yours may or may not be the 60th gun assembled after S180000, in any case that does nothing for it's value.

According to SCS&W your gun was shipped in '57 or '58.

Edited to add that between 130000 and 180000 or any other number those are all not .44 mags, they are all N frames and made in a number of calibers, mostly .357 I would guess but that's a guess only.

You have a very nice 44 Magnum, but by the time yours was (most likely) made, S&W had manufactured and shipped over 10,000 44 Magnums.

Also, your 44 Magnum was most likely shipped with target stocks (coke bottle type). I am pretty sure the Magna stocks are replacements for the originals.

Bill

thanks to all that have posted in response to my query. I have learned more in one day than I have in 30 years about this old gun.

So where's the pics???

i dont know how to post pics.im not puter savvy

Bob,
if you follow these instructions, you can do it. I did, and I was totally new to the net and computers. It really is easy.

http://smith-wessonforum.com/smith-w...ew-format.html