Just bought a 10-8 on auction. Don't have it yet, but per description it was a trade-in. The photos reveal its marked 'TWD 2856' on the left side. While if I try googling 'TWD police department' it comes up with a lot of The Walking Dead references, which is funny, but not helpful.

Anyone have a clue what 'TWD' is for ?
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EDIT: 1/17 - picked it up Friday. After some cleaning it shined up purdy good

Does the gun have an importer marking anywhere?

I’m just asking because lately a lot of ex-police Models 10, especially dashes 6 and 8, appear to have been re-imports from foreign agencies.

If it’s an English abbreviation, the D would likely be Department or Division, but given the W, Police isn’t the word in front of it

Well as mentioned, don't have the gun yet, hope to by end of this week or early next. From the limited pictures, can't tell if any importer marks.

As for the naming convention, yeah that's what is throwing me off here. Most of the time the D is prefixed with P, but not in this case. I did a check on Cities & Towns in USA starting with t and only thing that comes up with two words is "The Woodland" in Texas. So maybe? But who knows.

My guess would be the W stands for "Wildlife." So it would have been inventoried by a Wildlife Division in some state that begins with T (Texas, Tennessee, etc.).

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Jack
SWCA #2475, SWHF #318

Oh that's a good thought. I didn't even think of that one

So after another look at the pictures, I believe the side is marked T.W.C. "The Wackenhut Corp".... which after a quick read I guess makes sense. One of the leading security companies back in the day sounds like

Yes. I worked as a security guard for Wackenhut for a while after I got back from 'Nam. Pretty good outfit at the time. They issued us the Model 10, but sometimes we were allowed to carry personal guns, with permission, depending on the assignment.

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Jack
SWCA #2475, SWHF #318

From what I could find, they ran security details all the way from banks to Nasa. Must of been pretty big back then

not sure if they still do, but they used to have the Savanah River Site, pretty serious security, if I remember they even had helicopters

The Wakenhut Corporation guns were all marked in similar fashion. A lot of them were nickel plated before they bought a bunch of model 64s.

Attached Images

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Yep, I have a nickel 5" M10-5 that is marked TWC XXXX for the Wackenhut Corp, they bought quite a few 5" nickel M10's back in the day apparently

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Life NRA, Life TSRA, C&R FFL

I have a 4" heavy barrel nickel plated model 10-8 marked TWC-xxxx. It seems they must have sold off their revolvers over the last few years. Wonder what they replaced them with.

Got some pictures uploaded. After a delicate cleaning, it shines up nicely. Gonna take it to the range later today.

Sometimes the contracts specify, and sometimes state laws dictate, what weapons the guards and companies can use. If I recall correctly Wakenhut, then G4S, which is now owned by someone else, has been buying Glocks for a few years whenever they can. A local bank contract specified six shot 38s for the longest. As far as armed bank guard gigs go, it was one of the better ones through Wakenhut. I knew a few guys doing it. They had replaced their 64s with Glock 17 gen4s as of about 2018.