I managed to pick up this little beauty a few years back. Today I got around to dating it and got a bit confused. The book says the H serial numbers started in 1969 and the chart in the back reflects this with "H00001-H30001" as 1969-1970.



The number on this example is only 4 digits, H66XX. I guess by my reading of the book I would have assumed this would have been stamped in as H066XX.



Is it the case that for H serial numbers on Model 30-1's in the 4 digit range S&W omitted the initial "0" after the "H"?


Thanks for any replies.

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S&WCA 2159

I use the book only as a guide. I have a highway patrolman the book says 1955, but it was shipped May10, 1954

Welcome! The serial numbers on S & W revolvers of this era with letter prefixes always started with just the number, so with this series H1 would be the first gun. With later guns that have three letter/four digit SNs the leading zeroes are stamped, so the first one of these is AAA0001. Enjoy!

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Alan
SWCA LM 2023, SWHF 220

Alan is correct. This is one of those places where the SCSW is misleading in its lists. That entry should read: 1969-1970 H1 - H30001. But we should always remember that the lists in the book are rough brackets. They cannot always be completely relied on. They put you in the ballpark, because serial numbers were not always used sequentially.

For example, in the high K prefix range the numbers given are sometimes very misleading. In the groups listed for 1978-1983, usage bounced around a lot. I could give examples but this would become a very long post.

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Jack
SWCA #2475, SWHF #318

Thank you guys, much appreciated.

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S&WCA 2159