I saw this little guy at Cabelas. Great shape, not reblued, grips aren’t cracked, and the .38 S&W chambering is not an issue. I was still going to pass but then I saw the number stamped on the butt. Cabelas thought it was the serial number, but it looked like a PD issue number to me. With my GI Joe discount and a few bucks in points it was $370 - not a steal but not too bad either.
Some folks at the Colt forum recognized the font as NYPD, and the date (1918) and the shield number line up, so I’m pretty confident in its origin. It will be my third NYPD revolver.
Its in Colorado gun jail til Sunday, so just store counter pics for now.
I love these old cop guns.
My Police Positive records only go back to 1921 and are rather spotty at best. Only recently have I actually been able to document a PP that was in those records, that’s how thin they are. They range from 110xxx-167xxx and only cover 600 or so guns.
So using the PP as an example what can we say? The NYPD didn’t adopt the .38 Special cartridge until 1926, so if you have a .38 S&W caliber gun that pre-dates that, you’re in the running.
Regulations required a shield number on your piece and the placement on your gun is consistent. It is also much cleaner and neater than one comes across on post-war guns; the old time armorers took some pride in their work.
As to the font/style being NYPD: I’ve seen many different types of fonts used and an equally didverse amount of skill used in their application. There is an S&W M&P on gunbroker right now with a similar number (
Just a moment... ) stamped on the butt. Any good Tool & Die expert will tell you different dies were used between the two guns, but the point I want to make in comparing the two is the pre-war style of large characters that are neatly (for the most part) aligned.
Prior to WW2, the Department got its guns from dealers rather from the factory, so if you letter this gun, it may not show as an NYPD shipment. More likely it will show as a shipment to “Iron Alley’, the one block long Centre Market Place street behind Police HQ where the gunshops were. It’d be a shipment to Jovino, Lava, Greenblatt or one of the other dealers. This, combined with the other features and timing, strongly points to NYPD use but absent a Department purchase record or 10 Card, it’s not canon.
The subject of shield numbers on guns is something I need to explore a bit in terms of documenting. At some point I’ll have a long boring profusely illustrated piece on it.
Best,
RM Vivas
