A very good friend in Australia has a son who is an officer in the Victoria Police Dept near Melbourne. We communicate via e-mail frequently. He has given me much good information regarding their firearms past and present, as well as sending me some memorabilia and a couple of old holsters from the dept that were going to be discarded.

Recently I bought a Model 10-10 from Bud's that was advertised as a police trade-in. It is in surprisingly good condition cosmetically, and basically new mechanically with a mirror bore. It also had a tiny round sticker on the right side that said VPA with some numbers after the VPA. I sent a photo of the gun to my friends son. He said, "yep, it was one of ours here in Victoria". Not only that, one of the holsters he sent me is the exact holster for a 4" K frame S&W revolver.

Attached is a photo of the gun along with some of the "stuff". Frankly, I'm not extremely creative, so I will eventually reshoot the photo to make it more interesting. Additionally, I have since learned that I should have used hollow points instead of jacketed round nose bullets (that's what the VPD used in their revolvers chambered for .38 sp).

Brief range report: the gun is unbelievable accurate!!! I'm an adequate marksman, but definitely not a sharpshooter. At 61 years old I"m not as steady as I used to be. It was no problem to put two cylinders full in a 1 1/2" square at 10 yards--offhand---at 10 yards.

Have a terrific weekend,

Paul Moore
Colorado Springs, CO

Attached Images

Victoria Police Display copy.jpg (72.9 KB, 208 views)

I just bought 10-10 Victoria Police, serial number BZK6152. Is it close to your serial number?

Mine's BKZ6072.

Paul

Very nice That holster is probably a Helweg, they make (made?) them in Australia. I think I have one somewhere in my bin full of holsters.

The 10-10 is a good one, I had one that I should have kept, a Japanese police re-import. It had slow timing on one chamber so I ended up getting overly OCD about it and sold it. Probably should have kept it and just had a new extractor fitted. That gun shot very well and had a nice action.

Does yours have the serrated back and front strap? I also see it has the medallion-less grips on it common to the Australian police guns.

Yes, it is a Helweg holster. It will be for display only--I'm left handed.

Straps are all smooth. That's good to know about the Aussie guns typically having grips without medallions.

Thanks,

Paul Moore

December 1991 - January 1992.

Round butt is nice. I'd prefer that. I think the majority of the 4-inch heavy barrel guns were made square. Product code for a 4-inch HB RB would be 100123.

__________________
~ S&W aficionado in training ~

A qualified revolversmith can quickly and cheaply fix that issue with a new hand or peening the offending extractor tooth; fitting a new extractor is farther down the line of possible fixes.

Yes, the round butt is nice. Thanks for the product code info. That's great to narrow down the manufacture / delivery date. 1992 is what I came up with, but hadn't come up with a precise time-frame.

Paul Moore

I believe I have one of these inbound from Buds. It's advertised as police trade-in. Mine's a square butt, as I've already got a Smith round butt.
Can't hardly wait...

__________________
Fight socialism. Never stop.

Do guns from New South Wales also lack the S&W medallion? I think both Queensland and Western Australia also used M-10's. Queensland also had some Rugers.

Stantheman86 will have to chime in, because I had never heard about the medallionless grips until this thread.

Paul Moore

From what I read the medallion-less grips were replacement grips made in Australia and are often found on these trade-in S&W's. I don't know why they wouldn't just put Hogues or Pachmayrs on them, but for some reason I guess they had someone make new wood panels.

Your comments brought to mind an e-mail I received from my friend in the Victoria Police Dept:

"We originally had just timber grips in round and square butts (which we actually changed from the black rubber grips s&w supplied the guns with). Then in about 2006-2008 we started leaving the rubber grips on".

The e-mail implies Australian manufactured wood grips that they replaced the as-supplied rubber grips with. I'll e-mail him and ask him if he knows anything else about the replacement grips.

Paul