Originally Posted by opoefc

That's toss up. The factory would have put the serial number on any pearl or ivory stocks fitted to the gun, since they would have been removed for bluing or plating and needed to be numbered to be sure they got back on the gun for which they had been fitted. A distributor may not have needed to number the grips, since their operation may not have had as many guns going through the production line, as S&W had. If a gun letters as leaving S&W as a plain blue, or plated, gun with standard wood or hard rubber grips, and going to a distributor, and it now has engraving and fancy grips, with a serial number on the grips, that serial number didn't get there by anything the factory did. Ed.