Picked this little guy up the other day, sort of by happy accident. Professional tip: don't cruise gunbroker drunk and assume someone is going to out bid your lowball. Something about it has me slightly confused however.









The finish is very nice on it, but I can't find any other pictures of them with nickel hammer, trigger, and extractor. I wasn't able to get any pictures of the terribly small text along the top of the barrel, but it's sharp. I can't imagine this gun was re-blued based on what I see.

So I have two questions I could use help with, as this is my first Model One.

1) The right grip panel (the lighter colored one) is serial numbered to the gun, the left (darker one) is not. Should they both be numbered? Or are they like later guns where only one is numbered? I'm mostly wondering if the left side was a possible replacement, which could feed into this question:

2) Was the blued gun with nickel hammer, extractor, and trigger a factory option? Or does this indicate (possibly like the darker grip panel) that the gun was refinished at some point in the past?

Either way I am really happy with the gun. The only problem it has is that the spring that depresses the rear sight / cylinder lock seems to be missing or broken. Not a huge deal to me since I never intend on shooting it, but I might look at replacing the spring at some point just for the hell of it.

Side Note: as this is my first post on this forum here I figure I should introduce myself with a shot of my current S&W collection. It's proving to be quite a lot of fun collecting old Smith & Wessons, I look forward to hanging out on these forums.



I need more antiques I think.

Welcome to the Forum. Yes, you need more antiques! The grips on antique S&Ws, like your Model One, 3rd issue, are numbered on the back of the right panel only so your gun is correct, insofar as the grips are concerned. The nickel parts were probably done by someone after the gun left S&W. I have never heard of a S&W Model One having parts, such as those, verified as nickeled by S&W. Even guns shipped in nickel finish would have had the hammers case hardened, not nickel plated. Ed.