Full review w/Photos: Parked & rebuilt M&P 40 15rd mags from .44mag.com

[DASA]

Hi,
Recently I was in need of some spare mags for my FS M&P 40. I was about to order a factory new mag for $25 from 44mag.com when I noticed they were also selling something labeled,
"Smith & Wesson M&P Magazine .40 Fullsize 15 Round Parkerized"

44MAG.com - Smith & Wesson - Smith & Wesson M&P Magazine .40 Fullsize 15 Round Parkerized

Now I'm a sucker for a good deal, and at $20 these were priced at what used mags sell for. The wording on the ad copy didn't say these were used, so I ASSumed they were new with a different finish than the slick black coating S&W usually uses.

I ordered two and they arrived within three days via the $10 shipping option USPS. They arrived in the same packaging that CDNN uses, interesting. Here is the skinny on these mags:

They are actually used mags rebuilt with new springs, followers, and baseplates. You can see the tell-tale white line of a new follower across the top of the mag. Basically they are "like new".
I suspect they bought a bunch of rusty used mags, stripped them down to the metal mag bodies, and had them blasted and parked.

Now I believe the engineers at S&W and MEC-GAR (the Italian maker of Smith's mags) know a thing or two about making magazines. If they thought parkerizing was a better finish than a black teflon-like finish they would have picked the parkerizing.

The parked mags function well, but they are not as slick as the factory finish so they don't slide out of the mag well as fast. Parkerizing is very good at covering pitting from rust, and it soaks up oil into the pores of the metal nicely.

I ran three full mags worth of rounds (165gr flatpoint) hand cycled through the mags and gun to check for follower bind considering the inside of the mag is not as slick with the park as the teflon finish of the factory mag. The mags worked great, no issues at all. A nice "feature" of the Park finish is that neither mag displayed any "mag rattle" that the slick finished 15 rd .40 mags exhibit.

If factory new mags were selling for list price of $34 each I would not hesitant to purchase these Parked mags for range and carry use. However, since new mags are available for only $5 more as of this writing (May 2014), I would opt for the slick finish and buy the new mag instead of these.

I live in the tropics so it will be interesting to see if the Parked mags offer more rust resistance than the factory slick finish. I will update this review in six months or so with my findings.

Hope this helps anyone on the fence considering these.

Stay Safe.