Digging through my guns in the safe, I recently discovered a forgotten gem. I bought this gun through gunbroker a year or 2 ago but can not remember exactly the circumstances. I never posted here so it must have quickly been put away. The gun serial starts with 648 so I reckon it is from 1934. It has a 5 inch barrel all numbers match. Through luck recently a maroon display box was put up for auction on ebay with serial starting with 640 written on bottom leaving less than an 8000 digit serial difference. I ended up purchasing the box and it is a perfect fit for my discovery. You can see in the picture of it in the box where the original gun's hammer had worn away the front top edge of box. My hammer sits in that exact same spot. This package is one of my best and most complete from before WW2. I even have a bore brush and the box came with a caution paper about washing gun after every use due to corrosion from powder and primers back then. I am not sure if that caution paper is original to this box because they should have been not using black powder ammo by 1934? Anyhow here are few pictures of it all. Thank you for looking.

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Nice M&P. Thanks for sharing. Much of the ammo from that period used corrosive primers at least up thru WW2. The 30-06 government ammo was corrosive while the 30 Carbine ammo was non corrosive.

I'LL TAKE IT. oops, wrong section. beautiful 1930s revolver and box. all i need to complete my M&P accumulation is a 1930s M&P. i would settle for one is lesser condition. thanks for sharing Lee

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VFW, NRA, VVA, S&WCA 1758

Friend, if you can forget that one in the back of your safe, I think you may have too many guns??

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Randy
Provenance nerd

Somehow that one got missed and never used. You're lucky finding it.

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H Richard
SWCA1967 SWHF244

Now that's a dandy !! Wonder if I have something like that lost in the back of my safe. ??

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John

648xxx would likely put it into the early 1930s. Actually, there were factory BP loadings of .38 Special cartridges cataloged and available until the mid-1930s, but I have no idea who the customers for them would have been. Noncorrosive primers had largely displaced corrosive primers in American commercial ammunition by the early 1930s, but of course there was probably a considerable amount of old corrosive-primed civilian ammunition remaining in gun owners' hands and on some dealer shelves long after non-corrosive primers became the standard.

Beautiful M&P - and a fine job with the images.

Thanks for the gun show.

I love that the stocks have survived as well as the metal! That's super.

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Mike H

That is a wonderful example of an early S&W. I would love to have something like that.

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Brian
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Nice outfit.
That caution paper was used in the 30s. It does not mention black powder, but a shooter could have encountered some. The corrosive primers were much more likely to be encountered. I also think that the older smokeless powders might have left a residue that caused more rust than our modern powders.

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Regards,
Lee Jarrett

You are once again correct Lee, no mention of black powder but after the many responses in this thread I am now convinced it came in that box originally. Wish I could find a few more guns just like this one but it is the exception rather than the norm. to have found it in my safe. I do not know the exact number of guns I have because I tend to buy 2 to 3 S&W's revolvers a month always trying to find them in the very best condition at the lowest possible price. I got a home run with this one though.