City Hunter

The answer to your question is actually quite simple. All lists, including those in the Standard Catalog, are estimates. They are not completely accurate for one very important reason: S&W neither assembled nor shipped their handguns in serial number order. The only way to be certain of a particular handgun's "birth date" (always the ship date) is to have Dr. Jinks do a records search. Anything else is a guess; perhaps an educated guess, but a guess nevertheless.

BTW, I noted a significant error in the list that peterdeb posted. The last line in the J prefix list is 1983 = 1J18601 - 1JXXXX. That is incorrect. It should say, 1JXXXXX. The 1983 numbers always had six numeric digits. That's how you tell them apart from the "roving" J numbers of the early 1970s. The SCSW is also misleading on this point.

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Jack
SWCA #2475, SWHF #318