A friend offered to give up some space for me at the Laramie gun show Friday afternoon. I took a few bits and pieces for trade or sale. Almost immediately my '50 32 RP went away.

Another guy came to the table and asked me which Chiefs Special plus some cash I'd give him for a 4-digit Baby. We went to his table. Serial Number 2928, excellent condition, all matching. Priced at $850.

We walked back to my stuff. I told him I'd trade a '56 Chiefs 2" 3-screw round butt and a '69 Chiefs 2" square butt, both with cosmetic problems. My two combined were priced at $950. He jumped. I had $581 invested in the two. He put the pair on his table for the same price I'd been asking. He was happy; I'm happy.

Attached Images

	'51 Baby smooth ramp L.jpg (119.9 KB, 125 views)
	'51 Baby smooth ramp R.jpg (110.4 KB, 104 views)
	'51 Baby LR.jpg (101.8 KB, 98 views)
	'51 Baby smooth ramp front sight.jpg (45.3 KB, 94 views)

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Wrangler of stray Chiefs
Bob

Sounds like that other dealer believes in "Lose a little on every deal but make it up in volume." Actually, as long as you were both happy, that's all that matters. He plans to sell both and make more than he would have on the one, and you got a gun you wanted for a reasonable investment (in your real dollars.) Sounds like a win-win to me!

Froggie

PS Of course we don't know what HE had in the Baby... somebody may have swapped it to him for little or nothing, not knowing its desirability. Regardless, you both apparently came away happy, so all is well with the world!

You should be the happy one. Nice Baby chief.

Charlie

Nice!

When both parties are happy; even nicer.

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Mike
S&WCA #3065

That's could be true in another state. He told me who he got it from -- about a year ago. He didn't get for "little or nothing," but even if he lets himself get dickered down $50 a Chiefs on those two he'll come out even on what he was asking for the Baby (and I'm guessing he built in a fudge factor on that price, too).

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Wrangler of stray Chiefs
Bob

#2928 is approximately a mid '52 vintage.

Looks like it might be a smooth ramp and would be a new milestone in my database, the current earliest being 2945.

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Jim
S&WCA #819

My birthday is in June '52, Jim. If this number is that close I may have to pay to find out if I've finally gotten a birth month Baby. You had previously told me you guessed 19120 to be May '52 so I assumed this one was much older.

Yes, I read your 2945 number in "the book" today. Glad this one was able to set a new milestone.

Thanks for the info,

Bob

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Wrangler of stray Chiefs
Bob

Bravo so it is a smooth ramp.

You bring up an interesting fact:
Baby Chiefs were flying off the shelves soon after their introduction, so Serial # chronology with shipping dates was a little more linear than we’re used to with Smiths, however not completely. We find “batches of #s” a bit linear with ship dates but with other # batches that overlap.

For example I based my ship date estimate for 2928 on these dates of a batch of lower #s:

2018…..Mar 5, 1952
2321…..3/12/52
6855…..August 1952, smooth ramp

But I based 19120 on a different batch of higher #s which seem to overlap the above batch:

116XX….shipped 4/52
12178…. shipped in 5/52
19138….shipped in 5/52

Fun, a little like “reading chicken bones” huh?

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Jim
S&WCA #819

Can't stop chuckling (or is it clucking?)! Now that's funny.

Yes, 2928 is a smooth ramp.

Dang, with your telling anecdotes about ship dates I may have to letter 2928 just to know for sure.

I won't letter 11920 (also a smooth ramp, and I mis-typed the number in my earlier post) because it suffered a hard but productive life and is in the shop now for a do-over. I'll present it here after I get it back. At the least it will be a BBQ gun, but I'm thinking full-time EDC. It's going to make the Stoic die-hards avert their eyes and call me bad names, like blasphemer and such. That's okay, 2928 can hold the authentic smooth-ramp position in the lot while 21249 fills the serrated-ramp role. Still searching for the allusive half-penny, but, oh, the money! Makes my Scottish ancestors a bit squeamish.

Thanks Jim.

Bob

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Wrangler of stray Chiefs
Bob

Were you sitting behind Thom Braxton wearing the Air Force baseball cap and sporting the nice snubbies? If so, it's nice to put a face to a name. You and I and Thom had a nice chat late Fri afternoon. Wish I had known who you were then!

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Everybody could shoot

Yes, Wyo, that was me.

I remember our conversation. Enjoyed it very much.

Cheers,

Bob

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Wrangler of stray Chiefs
Bob

Just to add a little to the mix about serial numbers and shipping dates.

In addition to the fact that S&W skipped around with serial number blocks and the fact that when pulled from the vault, no attention was paid to the serial number order, you also must take into account that S&W PURPOSELY assembled guns out order in an effort to keep their largest competitor in CT from getting a handle on how many guns they were selling of any given model.

Many times if you look up or have a lettered gun say 12345, then 12346 will have shipped around the same time.

You can not however with any degree of accuracy look at 12345 and then 19234 and guestimate when it shipped. We have seen instances where 19234 shipped before 12345.

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James Redfield
LM #497

[QUOTE=JSR III;139749896]

you also must take into account that S&W PURPOSELY assembled guns out order.
James, You have to clarify this statement. They did not assembly guns out of order. That's not possible. Don't you mean, they shipped guns out of order. Where have you seen that? I've never seen that in print. I've looked at the shipping records and I only see a difference of a few months, not years. There are examples I've seen in other models were there is a difference of as much as 10 years in just a spread of 20 serial numbers.
Don Mundell
Assistant Historian
Smith & Wesson Historical Foundation

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Don Mundell

Roy Jinks told me that the factory would intentionally jump around when using serial number blocks and as we know they many times had several models using the same serial number groups.

As an example, the .22/32's were numbered within the .32 HE numbers and the kit guns when they first came out were also numbered within these blocks of numbers.

160,XXX could be a .22/32 HFT and then 163,XXX could be a .32 HE. 525,600 could be a .22/32 HFT and 527,XXX could be a kit gun. (These numbers are for illustration purposes only and are not given as true serial numbers.)

We also know that the first 2-3,000 .22/32 HFT's had a number imprinted on the bottom of the left stock panel that indicated the order in which the gun was assembled. There is NO correlation between these assembly numbers and the serial numbers which goes to prove that when the various assemblers were given a group of guns to build that they were not finished in any sequential order with regard to serial numbers and this was further randomized when the shipping department shipped them out with no concern for serial number order.

I was merely trying to emphasize the fact that trying to guestimate a shipping date based on other serial numbers with a known ship date can sometimes get you close but that the only real way to know for sure is by lettering the gun or joining the S&WCA for $60/year and asking Roy Jinks for the shipping date.

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James Redfield
LM #497

James,
Thanks for that $25.00 answer for a $5.00 question, lol. What you said Roy told you doesn't answer what I asked. If you go back and read what I asked, you'll see you didn't.

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Don Mundell

Donny, since you are the one that raised the issue, I tried to explain in detail what I was trying to state so as to eliminate any confusion.

Let me try again,

You said "they did not assemble guns out of order. That's not possible."

and I said

"We also know that the first 2-3,000 .22/32 HFT's had a number imprinted on the bottom of the left stock panel that indicated the order in which the gun was assembled. There is NO correlation between these assembly numbers and the serial numbers which goes to prove that when the various assemblers were given a group of guns to build that they were not finished in any sequential order with regard to serial numbers and this was further randomized when the shipping department shipped them out with no concern for serial number order."

So YES, they DID assemble guns out of order as far as serial number sequence is concerned. This is not shipping out of serial number sequence but rather assembly out of serial number sequence. I don't have my database on this computer or I could site specific examples so you will just have to take my word for it.

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James Redfield
LM #497

James
We need to take this off this thread.

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Don Mundell