Bought my M60 in Pleasant Hills, CA on 2/18/1968. Waited one year to the week for it. Price was $100, plus tax. Has non-diamond stocks, numbered to the gun. It's a safe queen in like-new condition with the box and all paperwork.
1960s S&W Model 60 Evolution
- Thread starter two-bit cowboy
- Start date
My nothing special Mod 60 was shipped May 76, and I have had it since 2006. I did dress it up with faux Ivory and Tyler T-Grip. It does get to the range every year or two for a few rounds.
OP
I'll bring this back to the top, again, to add a bit of new information.
Dr. Jinks researched those early numbers last year and came up with a new first and last serial number. The range he found for the first 39 Model 60s made in the summer of 1965 is 391978-401887. My Chiefs database lists 22 of those 39, and it shows a fair few Model 36s interspersed in the range.
Two from those first 39 were at two different display tables at the June 2025 Smith & Wesson Collectors Association symposium in Concord, North Carolina, which is where I was when Goony posted his. Both had shipped in October 1965, the first month Smith & Wesson shipped any of them. My display included serial number 401781, which Smith & Wesson loaned to gun writer L.R. "Bob" Wallack on October 21, 1965, so he could write a review for a gun magazine. Dr. Jinks told me it was one of the first twelve made.
Wallack's note shows how he treated Smith & Wesson's property.
The loaner still looks pretty amazing, considering ... although you can see the discoloration on the stainless steel hammer.
Like my display in Concord, my latest "Hail! To the Chiefs" article in the Spring 2025 issue of the Smith & Wesson Collectors Association Journal covers the Model 60s of the '60s.
Dr. Jinks researched those early numbers last year and came up with a new first and last serial number. The range he found for the first 39 Model 60s made in the summer of 1965 is 391978-401887. My Chiefs database lists 22 of those 39, and it shows a fair few Model 36s interspersed in the range.
Two from those first 39 were at two different display tables at the June 2025 Smith & Wesson Collectors Association symposium in Concord, North Carolina, which is where I was when Goony posted his. Both had shipped in October 1965, the first month Smith & Wesson shipped any of them. My display included serial number 401781, which Smith & Wesson loaned to gun writer L.R. "Bob" Wallack on October 21, 1965, so he could write a review for a gun magazine. Dr. Jinks told me it was one of the first twelve made.
Wallack's note shows how he treated Smith & Wesson's property.
The loaner still looks pretty amazing, considering ... although you can see the discoloration on the stainless steel hammer.
Like my display in Concord, my latest "Hail! To the Chiefs" article in the Spring 2025 issue of the Smith & Wesson Collectors Association Journal covers the Model 60s of the '60s.
OP
Thank you for the updated serial number range on the pilot production run. I was working off the old published data and obviously hadn't read the recent Journal article just yet. My question would be whether that much earlier #391978 might've been something of an outlier, along the lines of a toolroom prototype?
OP
We do not know, but I do not believe so since we know Smith & Wesson did not produce guns in serial order. I haven't seen that invoice, but it shipped along with 410025 (from the 897 units in the first regular production run) on March 28, 1966, to National Sporting Goods Company in Baltimore, Maryland.
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