Hello. The cat was away so I found myself in the local Cabela's Gun Library where this Mod. 469 had been sitting for 18 months. $329 OTD. Pretty good shape (the blems you may see near the muzzle in the first pic are just fingerprints and I was too lazy to retake the pic; the slide's finish is pretty close to perfect, so much so that I wonder if it was refinished-if so they did a great job). The guy who'd been running the place for maybe the last 2 years might have done even a little better, but turns out he's gone as of last Friday. Another mysterious disappearance from that store, which has only gotten worse since Bass Pro corporate starting calling the shots. He probably gave one too many a customer an extra $5 off a gun that had been sitting there for a couople years. But I digress.
Question for the B&B of the forum: Look at the third and forth pic. See that gap between the frame and the backstrap? The first of those pics is the gap "at rest" and the second is with my putting pressure on it towards the frame to close the gap. Can't say I really noticed that much of a gap before I bought the gun, and since then I've given it a thorough cleaning and cut the front strap off and sanded the edges of the Pachmayr one-piece it came with to make it a two-piece. I took out the grip pin, disassembled, and reassembled everything several times to try to close the gap but it kept coming out the same.
Is this "gap" normal for a 469? I pulled up some pics online and most seemed to have a gap of some degree, with only a few pics showing a pretty tight and flush fit. But did I do something to make this gap bigger or is something still not put together quite right? And should there be that amount of play in the backstrap vis a vis the frame?
A small thing but thought I'd ask.
Thanks for any info.
p.s. One other thing puzzles me: The rear sight is Novak-style (front and rear are black, not 3-dot, etc) and so far I haven't been able to find a pic of a 469 with this style of sight. Maybe the slide was refinished and some aftermarket sights put on there?