My question arises from some posts in the "Never Quit Learning" thread. I didn't want to hijack that thread, so I will start this one.
I'm looking for comment on unnimpressed, pencil-numbered diamond magnas that came to me recently in a package deal. As you can see, the stocks have the in-the-white dish-shaped interior buttons that are characteristic of prewar and immediately postwar periods. Medallions are silver. The penciled number 387327 is legible on the right panel inner surface, and the left panel seems to have the same number, though it is much harder to read. Note that there is a small relieved area at the top of each panel, apparently lightly dished by a round-nose drill. On the right panel, the relief aligns with the rearmost side plate screw. On the left panel, it aligns with the rebound slide pin.
Based on what I have learned from others, I would expect to see impressed serial numbers if these were of 1930s or 1940s manufacture. But a K-frame in the 387xxx range would date to the early 1920s, long before the first diamond magnas were produced; and if this is short for K387xxx, that would be a 1960 gun -- thus the inner features of the stocks are anachronisms.
I'm just not sure how to think about these. I know the numbers could have been written on the wood by an earlier owner to reflect the gun with which they were associated, regardless of whether that was the gun on which they were installed when it left the factory.
Did the company sell unnumbered replacement magnas that were suitable for retrofitting to early '30s revolvers (or even '20s) that had shipped without them?