I noticed from their website that this 910 had just come for sale at a local Cash America, so went to check it out. Since they're pretty corporate they won't haggle until a gun is out for maybe 3 months (they purport to have some guidelines). $375 OTD for gun and one mag. Probably $25-50 too much (edit: looking at some sales on GB, maybe $75 too high!), but I was in the mood for it.

Nice condition except for some light surface rust here and there on the slide that I'll be working on tonight, and some handling marks you'd expect for a 20+ year old gun. Smooth double action and short reset and single action. Feels good in the hand with the straight backstrap grip. As a righty, I happen to like the left-side only safety decocker. And this one was made before they put the hollowed-out hammer on there, which looks Taurus-cheap to me, and before Smith apparently went to laser etched markings instead of engraving.

I could see trading it in towards, say, a comparable condition Model 5904 one day, but for now it gives me a solid blued 3rd gen pistol.

Anyway, any thought are welcome.

p.s. I read on a post from a few years back on this forum that the 910 is a "3rd gen wannabe" or words to that effect. So take my "3rd gen pistol" remark for what it's worth. I guess at this point, it's close enough for my purposes.

Attached Images

	910 L.jpg (162.4 KB, 66 views)
	910 R.jpg (172.9 KB, 59 views)

It looks good to me.

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Made it, Ma! Top of the world!

I hope you have many enjoyable hours shooting and cleaning your SW910.

My 910 was my first Gen3 pistol. It shares space in the gun safe with 20 other Gen3s now. I still enjoy taking it to the range.

Officially... the 910 is a 3rd Gen "Value Line" pistol. I have taken to calling the 908, 909, 910, 410 and 457 the "TRUE Value Line" pistols, to differentiate them from the original two pistols that S&W dubbed Value Line (the 915 and 411) which were built to a higher standard.

The later Value Line pistols had more cost cutting, which was S&W's original intention. Cut costs, lower the price, sell lots and lots.

We don't have production numbers published anywhere that I have ever seen, but my educated guess is that of all of them, they built and shipped more 915's than any of the others.

The 910 is a full size, alloy frame double stack. It was shipped after 1994, so it's original magazine was a 10-round limited "ban era" magazine, hence the 910 model name. The 910 will happily accept and use any/all full capacity S&W metal frame double-stack 9mm magazines, at this point likely best known as "5906 Magazines."

The 910 (and 908, 909, 410, and 457) are most easily noticed as "different" because S&W did far less milling of the slide, and it looks more blocky and less sleek.

To be sure. I guess the "advantage" with the particular example that I picked up is that it's engraved on the slide and frame rather than laser etched, and has the "solid" hammer, which based on my cursory look on GB and elsewhere appears to be less common on the secondary market.

The serial number is VYC**** so that seems to be circa 1995-96, towards the beginning of the production run, so maybe that's why its engraved, etc, and later to save even more costs they went to laser etching and some cheaper parts.

Had a 909 about 8 years ago but, like a dummy, I sold it. It was a great gun and wish I still had it. ☹️

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Pine_Worker
Ex-LEO, NRA Life

Congrats on your 910!

It is an excellent pistol. Like many in this thread the 910 was my first 3rd gen pistol. The agency gave us a choice, Glock or S&W high cap 9mm. I took the Smith and they handed it and two extra mags to me and threw the box away.

Not knowing much of anything about aluminum framed 9mms at that time I lubed it with Breakfree and didnt change the recoil spring as I should have. Until told to use grease and change the spring every 3000 rounds by the range officer.

Even with the early abuse, that 910 went almost 29000 rounds before I cracked the frame. I got the states money out of it.

Enjoy that fime 9mm! Yours is the early version with forged parts and roll marks. More desireable, to me. Regards 18DAI

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7 +1 Rounds of hope & change

I really like the 910 that I inherited from my dad. It shoots very nicely and is pretty darned accurate. I don’t think my dad put more than a few hundred rounds thru it. If I remember correctly its an early 2003 example.

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NRA Life Member, Patron

That's a nice gun. If the 910's not my cup of tea, it's not the gun's fault. It should serve you well for many years.