That's a neat story, Brian. My 63 came to me as a Christmas gift too. The giver is long gone, but the gun remains.

63s are neat little guns. I never thought of them as being the first stainless S&W .22 but now that the OP brings that up, I do recall the demand for them at the time. They were as hard to get as the Model 60s and Model 66s were in their hey-days. It was fun time back then for us revolver-hacks with the "new" products coming along that now seem pretty mundane. But it was fun nevertheless, even if lack of supply was sometimes a bit frustrating.