I recently came across this very early 3rd gen catalog and thought others here might enjoy it also.

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I love it!

Points of interest... no .40cal’s exist in this catalog and no 10mm yet either. And no Novak lo-mount rear sights.

Also another easter egg: that crazy .45 magazine that wasn’t yet the evolution of the design, but rather a 645 magazine with an odd hard rubber block/pad glued to the floor plate!

3900 series “the slimmer, lighter-weight full size 9mm”
Ha! As the owner (and lover) of a pair of 3906’s, these tanks are a half-ounce lighter than the double stack counterparts.

Slimmer no doubt, but lighter? The difference is about equal to a single round of 9mm. And indeed — at 8+1 capacity versus 14+1 (soon enough, 15+1) each fully loaded is a more noticeable difference. But as to the pistols themselves, put it this way. A 5906 with 8 rounds of ammo left in it weighs almost exactly the same as a 3906 with 8+1 in it.

Serial numbers: all the pictured guns are TBW or TBY serial prefix... everyone! Run to your safe and see if you own one of these! Guess I might have thought we would see “AIP” in such a catalog or brochure, but nope.

All in all, this is a pretty neat old relic. Thanks for sharing!

Fantastic, JS! Thank you very much!

If only someone could go back in time and warn them against the one piece grips.

Nice piece of history.

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Can open, worms everywhere.

I love the extremely thin nature of the one-piece grip but I have always hated the complete lack of actual grippiness. (grippiness may not be an actual word in the English language)

The massive black eye of the early shattering one-piece grips and that fact that the grip controls the mainspring... man, that must have caused some serious ulcers at S&W back in the day.

Brings up a side discussion. S&W marketed this new grip as delrin. I’ve later read where Roy Jinks describes them as Xytel. Is this the difference in the early “shattering” grips versus the eventual working ones?

If I can get some decent pictures, I’d love to open up a 3rd Gen grip discussion thread. We can post script the discussion with BMCM’s 5906 project grips!

The "TBx" serial numbers were also used on the interim and pilot models.

Oh hell! No idea where I got the word “xytel.” Did I make that up?

Xenoy is the word that I meant. I think.

I scanned some catalogs a few years ago - maybe I'll do a few more in the spirit of social distancing.

Located here - http://smith-wessonforum.com/139492381-post32.html

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