Saw one that made me wanna cry

BC38 · #1 02-22-2020, 08:46 PM

I went to the Post Falls gunshow today and saw a really interesting old M&P that the seller said was from 1940

The cool thing about it was that it had a very unusual length barrel - around 3". The roll marks were perfectly centered and the rollmark on the left side of the barrel had a dingbat character at each end - I can't recall if it was a caliber marking or a S&W rollmark, but I recall noticing the dingbat characters. The thin part of the original sight blade had been cut off, and a slot milled in the remaining base for a pinned sight blade with a brass bead to be installed in the slot. The slotted base looked like an original forged part of the barrel - not something soldered on or added later. Judging by that and the crown of the barrel, it sure didn't look as if it had been cut.

The left side also looked like it had been refinished at some point in the distant past - because the logo rollmark looked shallow and washed out, as did the barrel roll marks. There was no address line on the right side - maybe polished off? I'm thinking it was possibly refinished at the same time that the sight blade was replaced.

The $500 price tag seemed pretty ridiculous to me, but the real deal killer was the butt.

The lanyard ring hole was drilled right through the serial number - which by the spacing of the remaining numbers appeared to be a 5-digit number with no letter prefix. I even talked the guy into letting me remove the grips to see if the serial number had been re-stamped on the side of the grip frame. It hadn't.

So basically a BATF illegal and prohibited gun.

Modified · #2 02-22-2020, 10:35 PM

I had a baby who wouldn't stop squirming in my arms at the time, but I did have a look at that one. Sort of.

Full disclosure; I was driving from Yakima to Kalispell with a baby and we stopped because I saw the GUNSHOW sign and I thought we could use a break. She was having none of it by the time I came across that gun.

I did notice a couple things.

The front sight was some kind of rifle sight. It wasn't added very well to the gun.

The gun looked to have been rebarreled from my cursory inspection, also it had been re-blued.

I had thought it might be a .38 S&W Victory model, but I was unable to handle it to verify because the baby was being wiggle worm supreme and I was just trying not to drop her.

My verdict was that in another life I would have probably pored over the gun for a while, and come to the conclusion that the gun is a very unfortunately poor attempt at upgrading an old S&W. The configuration being quite nice, the execution being very poor.

The price of course was utterly insane.

I did, at the show, notice an unusually nice crop of extremely nice pre model 14s. No idea why there were so many, but boy if I had wanted one I could have walked around with a nice stable of them for pretty reasonable prices.

As it was I walked out with a baby, and then had another 3 and something hours in the car with her

BC38 · #3 02-22-2020, 10:57 PM

LOL, did your little one have kind of medium brown hair barely long enough to be pulled up in a rubber band on top of her head? I only saw a few really little kids at the show but the little girl I'm describing was one that caught my attention.

I agree the front sight work was a little crude, but the thing that struck me was the 3" uncut barrel with a dingbat character at each end of the rollmark. Other than the Highway Patrolman, all the dingbat markings I've seen on barrels were on really old ones. On the other hand, I haven't seen any tapered 38 special barrels of that vintage that were 3" either. I really wasn't sure quite what to make of that one.