Starting to shop for some extra mags for the 4506-1.

What are the going prices on factory mags with black followers?

i just sold 11 or 12 for $20.00 each as it was what i paid for them from CDNN, they were police trade ins like new condition, they may still have some.

Robertson trading on GA has had some listed there. $25.00 each, combined shiping. I got 2, and they are good. Flapjack.

The gunsmith at Ammo Brothers in Cerritos said he had a 4506-1 and advised me to buy them directly from S&W. He said he had problems with aftermarket magazines...which seems surprising since everywhere and everyone I've seen raves about how reliable the 4506 is no matter what.

Th only thing I can think is that although the 4506 is a .45 and resembles a 1911, it in fact is NOT a 1911. Perhaps most of the aftermarket .45 magazines are probably for 1911's and thus don't work well in 4506's.

I'm just relaying what the gunsmith advised me...perhaps there are others here and online that have reliable experiences with aftermarket mag's, I don't know. Me, I ordered 4 from S&W and they were $35 a piece.

The only non-factory mags I would used in any of my guns would be Mec Gar's.

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M&P .40, M&P 9c & Shield 45

Mec Gar does not make (and hasn't ever made as far as I know) a 4506 magazine. If they did, I would have some.
Get the 4506 mags either here on the forum, or search your local pawn/gun shops and look at those. I was surprised to find them here in VA Beach in the "nobody cares about this stuff" bin in a pawn shop. I paid $10 each for some with yellow followers, and $25 each for the newer ones.

Please explain the followers. Yellow , Orange and black???

The black follower is the latest of their engineering changes at S&W to make a good design. (I'm not saying the others are bad, but ammo has changed a lot over the years, and the black ones feed the most types of ammo the most reliably)
The black followers are available from Midway for about $3.
I have used the others and they work fine, but I only ever tested them with hardball.
The magazine body itself has also changed. The newest mags (which come with a black follower, like I said) have a different detent in them at the feed lip area. The older ones have had at least two revisions that I am aware of. One is the early metal base-plate mags had nearly no detent in them at all, and the "this magazine must have a yellow follower" mag has a single line dent in each side of the top of the mag body at the back of the feed lip area.
I have tested the "this magazine must have..." mags with BLACK followers, and had fantastic success.
In short, the reason people tell you to get black follower type mags is that they are the latest ones, and will have newer springs (14 coils vise 13) and the new revision of the detent in the body. They are also by far the most common.