Did these come from the factory with wood grips or rubber grips ?

Wood with contoured finger grooves.

some came with rubber grips as well....frames changed from square butt to round butt somewhere along the line with the -1 guns. ....i would guess that wood combats came on the square butt guns and rubber hogues with smith emblems came on the round butts

here is a 617-1 round butt with factory hogues:

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Kris
OGCA, NRA LM

According to SCSW 617-1 introduced the synthetic grip. As far as I know only the 617 no dash had the wood grips

From my observations, dash one only reliably signifies a 617's frame having the new rear sight and being drilled and tapped for optics. It appears that existing square butt frames were used up in early dash one production and all of those that I've seen wore wood combat stocks but I wouldn't be surprised if the last of the square butted 617-1s shipped with a Hogue rubber stock. Except for Performance center 617-1s, all the round butted 617-1s shipped with rubber Hogues as far as I know.

This strays off topic, but I haven't had a place to be a "pondsideshooter" for quite a few years. "stopping power" remains in dispute, but there's no doubt that .45s sink aluminum cans faster than smaller bores. (wink)

S&W would have used up any square Butt frames left at the start of the 617-1 for sure and whether they put wood or rubber grips on them I couldn't tell you. Today if you buy a no dash 617 most have seen the S&W wood combat grips sold long ago for a nice profit and then rubber grips installed. I got lucky on my no dash as it came with wood grips form a forum member.

I had a 617-1 which I bought early in 1994 and foolishly sold around about 2002. I recall it came with the hogue rubbers, color cased target trigger and hammer. Fortunately I saw the light and recently got myself a new 10 shot dash 6 model.
Campfire

I apologize for resurrecting an older thread, but I bought a 617-1 in March of 1995 and it came with Hogues and is a square butt gun. (I pulled the grip and dug through the attic for the box to verify just in case I was imagining this.)

My -1 (made in early '93) came to me with a square butt and finger groove combats. Currently it's wearing grips by forum member Kurac. I just like the looks and feel of the Kuracs more than I like the combats.

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removed PC

I would bet some of the very early released 617-1's did come with wood combat grips but the majority got the Hogue rubber grips.

Hi

I have an 617-1 PC Target Champion with combat wood grips.

My 617-1 is square butt and came with rubber grips. I got it NIB. It has case colored trigger and hammer

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My sgntr is mor thn 30 chrctrs

How about some pics ?
Do you live in Europe and if not does it have import stamps ?