[Photos for this post were lost in the Photobucket meltdown a few years ago. I will try to restore them by the end of the month (April 2022).]
See post 15 for a newly surfaced Virtual Mexican, and posts 16ff. for a newly reported original Model of 1946 Target.
ORIGINAL POST BEGINS HERE.
This is NOT what it appears to be at first glance.
It is however something almost as rarely seen as the Model of 1946 ("Mexican") that it resembles: a prewar .38 M&P Target Revolver that was modified after the war to take the larger micro-click rear sight. The higher rear sight required a taller front sight, which certainly gives the gun a distinctive profile and makes you realize that esthetics would be one of the reasons that postwar target revolvers had ribbed barrels.
The revolver is no. 633646. A .38 M&P Target with a nearby serial number is known to have shipped in late summer of 1931.
There are no factory stamps that indicate the work was done at the factory, but the installation and the associated refinish are both up to factory standards. The ribbed foot of the rear sight, well known from the postwar Masterpiece revolvers, was carefully cut and polished at the front end to match the contours of the prewar frame. The edges of the postwar foot stand a little proud of the frame top.
A close-up of that reach-for-the-sky front sight made famous by the Mexican model.
The refinish is excellent. The hammer stud appears to have an unflattened dome and the trigger return spring stud, barely flattened at the tip, remains proud of the frame surface. The logo and other rollmarks remain deep and crisp.
But there is no doubt the gun was refinished. Though the bevel of the ejector rod knob is in the white (nice attention to detail by the refinisher), the rear faces of the ratchet are blued.
The gun came in a proper patent box (fairly good condition, but with reparable busted corners) that may not be its original box. There is no serial number on the bottom of the box, but there is the abbreviation "Targ" and a lightly penciled number that looks like a K with three or four following digits. The label is pale yellow, which I believe is correct for the early 1930s. Written on the label is the price "36.50" (or possible "33.50") which seems too high a price for a prewar gun and perhaps too low for one sold in the immediate postwar era. The price seems to be written in faded ballpoint pen, which suggests postwar labeling, but I don't really know how to interpret this marking.
The stocks are postwar magnas that were originally on another gun, either C or K 127981.
One can speculate how this gun (and the very few similar specimens that have been seen) came to exist in this configuration. Certainly the shooting community knew that revised target models were on S&W's schedule for production soon after the end of WWII. The company talked in their ads about new models that would appear in 1946. The K-22 finally began distribution for real at the beginning of 1947, but the new short-action K-38 didn't really start leaving the factory until a year later.
Shooters knew from the scant prewar production of the K-22 Second Model that the company was moving to a click-adjustable rear sight and had every reason to think that was the sight of the future for the company's commercial production. Some shooters might have been too impatient to wait for the new target .38s to appear and might have sent in their old M&P .38s to have the upgraded sights fitted to them. Or, in light of the expense of completely replacing a revolver, they might have elected to have an old gun improved and spruced up to get a functionally modern target .38 at minimum cost.
Either way, the window for that kind of conversion was probably pretty small -- perhaps calendar 1947 was about the extent of it. Once the existence of the Mexican model became known, it was clear that S&W had the tools to cut old frames for the new sights, and that might have triggered some interest. The argument from economy might have been grounds for conversion of old frames into the early 1950s, but I would guess not so much after that.
There may have been no more than a few dozen guns that were modified into this configuration. I have not gone searching for them, but I remember running across references to only two others aside from this one. At least one of those was considered to be a counterfeited Mexican, but I wonder if that wasn't an overly suspicious response to an innocently converted firearm. Certainly a true counterfeit would need a proper sight foot, stocks, and serial number in all the usual places on the frame and parts. Seems to me that would be tough to bring off.
This is the same gun that was discussed in a couple of threads here about 10 weeks back. It was offered in an auction whose catalog misreported the serial number and was additionally vague in describing the gun, leading some of us to think it was an actual Mexican. The atypical bidding on the gun apparently drove the auctioneer to pull it from the auction. It recently went up again with a revised and clearer description, and in the interim I had the chance to look at it in person and figure out what it was. I was lucky enough to be the winning bidder at a decidedly non-Mexican price.
See post 15 for a newly surfaced Virtual Mexican, and posts 16ff. for a newly reported original Model of 1946 Target.
ORIGINAL POST BEGINS HERE.
This is NOT what it appears to be at first glance.
It is however something almost as rarely seen as the Model of 1946 ("Mexican") that it resembles: a prewar .38 M&P Target Revolver that was modified after the war to take the larger micro-click rear sight. The higher rear sight required a taller front sight, which certainly gives the gun a distinctive profile and makes you realize that esthetics would be one of the reasons that postwar target revolvers had ribbed barrels.
The revolver is no. 633646. A .38 M&P Target with a nearby serial number is known to have shipped in late summer of 1931.
There are no factory stamps that indicate the work was done at the factory, but the installation and the associated refinish are both up to factory standards. The ribbed foot of the rear sight, well known from the postwar Masterpiece revolvers, was carefully cut and polished at the front end to match the contours of the prewar frame. The edges of the postwar foot stand a little proud of the frame top.
A close-up of that reach-for-the-sky front sight made famous by the Mexican model.
The refinish is excellent. The hammer stud appears to have an unflattened dome and the trigger return spring stud, barely flattened at the tip, remains proud of the frame surface. The logo and other rollmarks remain deep and crisp.
But there is no doubt the gun was refinished. Though the bevel of the ejector rod knob is in the white (nice attention to detail by the refinisher), the rear faces of the ratchet are blued.
The gun came in a proper patent box (fairly good condition, but with reparable busted corners) that may not be its original box. There is no serial number on the bottom of the box, but there is the abbreviation "Targ" and a lightly penciled number that looks like a K with three or four following digits. The label is pale yellow, which I believe is correct for the early 1930s. Written on the label is the price "36.50" (or possible "33.50") which seems too high a price for a prewar gun and perhaps too low for one sold in the immediate postwar era. The price seems to be written in faded ballpoint pen, which suggests postwar labeling, but I don't really know how to interpret this marking.
The stocks are postwar magnas that were originally on another gun, either C or K 127981.
One can speculate how this gun (and the very few similar specimens that have been seen) came to exist in this configuration. Certainly the shooting community knew that revised target models were on S&W's schedule for production soon after the end of WWII. The company talked in their ads about new models that would appear in 1946. The K-22 finally began distribution for real at the beginning of 1947, but the new short-action K-38 didn't really start leaving the factory until a year later.
Shooters knew from the scant prewar production of the K-22 Second Model that the company was moving to a click-adjustable rear sight and had every reason to think that was the sight of the future for the company's commercial production. Some shooters might have been too impatient to wait for the new target .38s to appear and might have sent in their old M&P .38s to have the upgraded sights fitted to them. Or, in light of the expense of completely replacing a revolver, they might have elected to have an old gun improved and spruced up to get a functionally modern target .38 at minimum cost.
Either way, the window for that kind of conversion was probably pretty small -- perhaps calendar 1947 was about the extent of it. Once the existence of the Mexican model became known, it was clear that S&W had the tools to cut old frames for the new sights, and that might have triggered some interest. The argument from economy might have been grounds for conversion of old frames into the early 1950s, but I would guess not so much after that.
There may have been no more than a few dozen guns that were modified into this configuration. I have not gone searching for them, but I remember running across references to only two others aside from this one. At least one of those was considered to be a counterfeited Mexican, but I wonder if that wasn't an overly suspicious response to an innocently converted firearm. Certainly a true counterfeit would need a proper sight foot, stocks, and serial number in all the usual places on the frame and parts. Seems to me that would be tough to bring off.
This is the same gun that was discussed in a couple of threads here about 10 weeks back. It was offered in an auction whose catalog misreported the serial number and was additionally vague in describing the gun, leading some of us to think it was an actual Mexican. The atypical bidding on the gun apparently drove the auctioneer to pull it from the auction. It recently went up again with a revised and clearer description, and in the interim I had the chance to look at it in person and figure out what it was. I was lucky enough to be the winning bidder at a decidedly non-Mexican price.
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