I may have been a little over-inspired by posts about the factory mags being hard to find, and got a couple extras online...

I now have three slightly different types, if you include things like the shape of the follower, color of the spring, lock plate etc. A couple of them have an inscription which reads in part:

"...Restricted: Export, Law Enforcement and Government use only S/N 91394"

I read online that those were made during the ban on high capacity magazines, but I am wondering if that is actually the case, or if they in just came from LE surplus and not intended for retail sales?

Attached Images

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LE marked magazines are police/security trade-in's or surplus. Perfectly legal to own in states that aren't socialist cesspools. There were minor alterations to the factory S&W magazines over time and sometimes for the model pistol they were made for, such as the 4516-1 magazines. The followers went from metal to black plastic to color plastic to caliber-specific color coded plastic. Magazine floor plates were steel at one point then moved to polymer. Gen 1 and 2 magazines generally had the S&W makers mark on the floor plates, later in Gen 3 they put the factory mark on the magazine body. Capacity changed too as the 59 series went from 14 to 15 round capacity to ten rounds during the Clinton ban and are easily identified with the cut at the lower half of the magazine and dimples that were the only thing holding the magazine together, so if you cut the dimples, you would have a useless magazine. It was their way of thwarting anyone trying to modify the magazines to hold more than ten rounds. Biggest thing is if they're reliable and most factory magazines are. Changes in spring color could mean the springs were replaced at some point.

When the Clinton’s “crime bill” and the Federal AWB went in to effect in 1994 two things relevant to these magazines happened. First was that all magazines still in circulation and already produced were grandfathered in and absolutely LEGAL. If a shop had them for sale or you had a stash in your gun room, they were good to go. What changed was that manufacturers were no longer allowed to produce them for civilians to purchase.

They could still make magazines with a capacity beyond 10 rounds but they had to be stamped “LE ONLY” and “restricted” and if you had one of these in your possession and you didn’t also have some LE credentials, that was against the law.

When the AWB sunsetted in 2004, of the restricted marked magazines became legal for civilian ownership once again.

As said above... legal Federally. Silly different States had their own rules in some places.

They were made after the passing of the Violent Crime Control
and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, on 13 September, 1994--
hence the 'serial number'.

The law expired/sunsetted on 13 September 2004. I don't know
when S&W stopped marking the mags.

Federal Assault Weapons Ban - Wikipedia

Thanks. I was assuming it had to do with the ban, but was not sure. We would not want employees of a Federal Bureau of something or other to show up at my door, or someone demanding a piece of my liver because I checked the wrong box...

All good in the state where I live, it may well be sort-of purplish blue, but people love their firearms, hunting and fishing. Even the (cough) socialists (cough) seem to go hunting here.

Thanks for the note about the color of the spring, I had not thought of that.

edit:

I had originally assumed that since the higher capacity mags fit with an inexpensive adapter, there would be lots of the used, 12-rd mags to be had for cheap. When that turned out to not be the case, I may have overreacted just a tiny bit (ok, maybe more than tiny, lol)