Sam, Is this the gun that needs a new hammer? S&Ws that won't letter, because they are not recorded in the shipping ledgers, can be interesting mysteries some times. The reason you list are true, plus I found that shipments to certain dealers , like Wolf & Klar, where sometimes several 100 guns of various configurations were shipped in batch, the shipping clerk would enter the guns by serial number but only list the configuration of the first gun in the shipment, with a ditto for all the rest. Some guns were differnt barrel lengths, different finishes, some were target model & some were not. So if the gun appears right, and/or has some special order embellishments, then the absense, or erroneous, shipping entry may not affect it's value at all. There's always the build sheet, or Foreman's day Book records that may show your serial number going thru the various prduction stages. Those records are not searched for factory letter input. Ed #15