My pleasure for any and all assistance. Lotta good folk on this forum who are here primarily to gain and share knowledge, when not drooling over all the revolver pictures.

Plenty of purchasers do face-to-face deals with strangers met through online ads and don't have any problems arise. I avoid it out of an abundance of caution. As you rightly point out, you're meeting someone you don't know, generally at an outdoors location like a parking lot because you can't really do a gun deal in Starbucks; they at minimum have one gun on them, and they know you are carrying likely at least a few hundred in cash. I consider that a recipe for trouble. I might consider it if the seller and I agreed to meet, discuss and test fire at a local shooting range where I know the employees and have gotten their okay to do the deal there.

As for purchasing used, yes, there's a learning curve. A little research here and elsewhere online, and some time spent with new and older guns goes a long way to getting comfortable assessing the condition of a potential purchase, but not everyone's interested in that degree of involvement, and there's nothing wrong with that. For basic purchasing, a little well selected knowledge is all you need.

And don't forget, new revolvers need to be looked over before purchasing, too; not everything leaves the factory in perfect shape -- and that's a bit of an understatement.