Wow,that is one beautifull pistol, wanna,trade????
I found that in the old GunList Magazine, in the pre-internet days, about 25 or more years ago. Back then, GunList was one of the premier gun publications. It was delivered every other Friday morning before 10AM, if you ordered overnight FedEx. Naturally, on the east coast it is 10AM before it is 10AM in any other time zone. I had been taking off every other Friday morning for a few hours, at least until noon or 1PM. The S&W Section was all that mattered to me.
Many members of the S&WCA, including myself, had fractional page size advertising. Mine was about the size of a business card ( I think that was 1/16 of a page). Gary Garbrecht (RIP), at least twice as big (apx 1/8 page), and Ray Brazille (RIP) was about 2x larger than Gary's at about 1/4 page.
I saw this strange description and called the Jeweler / Gun Dealer in Springfield, Mass. immediately. He re-affirmed it was exactly as he described, not altered in any way and came from a retired and elderly S&W employee.
I was the first one that called and agreed to purchase on the spot. I called back an hour later to tell him the cashiers check was on the way via FedEx, overnight, when he explained that he'd received several other calls on it since I called. Two collectors, more persistent than the others, would not take no for an answer, offering him double, and then triple, the price to sell it to them instead of me.
So, I asked ... what now ? (figuring he'd want more money) but he said, "I told them it was sold and if they wanted it they would have to speak to you. I'll put their names and numbers in the box in case you want to sell it to one of them." And he did exactly what he said.
After that I arranged an inside line with him on any employee or odd configuration S&Ws that came his way, to call me before he listed them. That relationship lasted many years until he passed away, too, about 10 or so years ago.
S&W collector / friends are the best asset a S&W collector can attain. That and the internet access has opened a world of information that was never before known. You can contact anyone in the world with the touch of a button to learn more in a few months (if you studied aggressively) than most older, pre-internet, collectors would have learned in a lifetime. Amazing !