A few months ago, while browsing online sellers, I came across the below Registered Magnum. I thought about it briefly, and realized I had to have it. I really liked the HBH, the condition, the originality, and the fact that it was lettered. With RMs, if you are going to spend any kind of serious loot, it’s a good idea IMO to buy a lettered gun. Too many times they are customized and subsequently unoriginal. The timing of this great find was poor in regards to my personal life, but I knew I could sell pieces from my personal collection and buy it. I contacted the seller, we agreed to a price, and I put it on layaway.

While the RM was on layaway, I contacted the SWHF and bought the paperwork. I cannot say enough about how great of an outfit they are – they are prompt in every way, they communicate well, the prices are very fair, etc. They are awesome! If you appreciate them, or their mission, please donate and join the SWHF! Anyways, months later I got the RM. It came with these interesting custom target stocks. I had stashed away a pair of prewar N frame magnas months before that I found on a model 58 of all guns! The gun was sure something to behold in person. It’s completely factory original sans the grips, 95% to 98% blue, simply beautiful. It shipped with prewar magnas, and now it wears those although of course I am keeping the custom stocks as well.

Aside from the revolver itself, I really liked the letter – not only because the letter proved the gun was correct, but also because of the unique history – it was ordered by a Captain Herman Thomas who was employed by the Philadelphia PD and was a competitive shooter! A friend and I began researching him online and we found a great deal of interesting stuff. He shot against the greats of the day, Hoffman from Atlantic City, Dr. Calkins, Julian Hatcher, Karl Frederick, J.M. Thomas USMC, William Whaling, etc. He held his own against these guys too, which tells us how talented of a shooter he was. I was not able to find anything about the man who was buying the revolvers, Harry E. Stone of Morristown, PA. Per a handwritten letter from Cpt. Thomas to D.B. Wesson, Mr. Stone was robbed in the winter of 1938 for over $3000 (a ton of money back then, approx. $50k today, when you consider inflation) worth of merchandise, including all of his guns. He apparently was a shooter himself, and the order from Thomas to S&W was for a K22, 38 M&P target, and the RM of this thread to presumably replace these 3 revolvers from his collection. I really liked that I got this hand written letter to DB from Thomas with the factory paperwork. The other key to the SWHF paperwork was that the factory letter that came with the revolver did not mention the HBH. I was hoping the SWHF would show that the HBH was original, and I got lucky – it is original.

I took the gun out to fire it one day in July, 48 rounds of 357 magnum – I loved it! It has the wonderful prewar long action, magna grips are one of my favorites (the other favorite are cokes), the sights while being plain are effective, and the HBH makes SA shooting a joy. Prewar hand ejectors are some of the best guns ever made IMO.

Without further ado, here is the RM - SN - 58824 REG - 4952






It has a couple of spots here on the rear of the frame. Those are the only detractors to the finish.




Here is the humpback hammer. It has the concentric grooves, which is correct for a RM HBH. I was very pleased with the SWHF paperwork which showed that it shipped with this hammer.









A "virgin RM" - rarely encountered today. I'm fortunate enough to now have 2 RMs that never went back to the factory.




Here are the custom stocks that came with the revolver. If anyone has any idea when they were made or who made them, let me know!




The gun looks damn good with those target grips. When I shot it I had the factory prewar magna grips on it, but these feel great too.




Here is the factory letter for the gun. The letter did not mention the HBH which made me wonder if it was right or not, but I lucked out that it was correct. With what plain jane RM hammers sell for, I guess I would have won either way

Here is a side note - the auction result for a standard RM hammer. $1035 on 7-27-14

GunBroker.com - Error



Here is the SWHF paperwork. First, their reply letter to my inquiry. Interesting read.



Here is the order sheet which specifies HBH. Aside from the HBH, the gun now has magnas like it originally shipped with, the barrel length is original, and the front and rear sights are original to the gun. Rarely do we see RMs which are this original.



Here is the in house order summary spec sheet for the RM



Here is the in house order summary spec sheet for the M&P target and the 22 Outdoorsman



Here is the letter from Cpt. Thomas to DB Wesson. In the letter, he mentions the robbery, payments for the 3 guns, and at the end he asks for an autographed copy of "Burning Powder"




As stated, apparently Cpt. Thomas was a pretty serious and talented revolver shooter. I could not find his obituary, or any kind of shootouts he got in as a policeman, but I was able to find online how he performed in the NRA 1920 and 1921 Camp Perry pistol matches, as well as some other interesting stuff about him.

Here he is (left) talking to a Cpt. Harker and Karl Frederick who was a 3 time Olympic gold medal winner in the 1920 summer olympics in Belgium (2 for US pistol team events, and 1 self). Frederick would later be President of the NRA. Harker was a competitive pistol shooter from Baltimore MD.



He volunteered to be the coach for the University of Penn’s rifle team. A pretty prestigious position. U-Penn is an Ivy League school.



Here he discussed the finer aspects of shooting with two young women. He appears to have a S&W Perfected Single shot although it could also be a 1st or 2nd model single shot, judging by the photo



In the below story, he was the hero of a team competition. Without his fine shooting, his team may have lost. He had the best score of all 10 competitors



Here are the results for the 1920 NRA re-entry pistol shoot. Notice how many separate events he placed in! And not to be Mr. Obvious here, but wow were Ira Calkins and William Whaling damn good! If Calkins or Whaling didn't place in the top 3 of a pistol competition, it was because they didn't participate in it!






I have the "?" beside the "Pennsylvania civilian" team which if I had to guess, was the team that Cpt. Thomas shot with, although we cannot be sure.



Below is how Cpt. Thomas performed at the 1921 Camp Perry. He fared pretty well considering his competitors were some of the best in the world at the time.



Here are the winners and second place finishers. He didn't make this page, but I posted it because its interesting to see how dominant some of these guys were, guys like Calkins and Whaling - true legends



He also ends up shooting in the 1922 NRA pistol matches. Here he gets a bronze medal



In the 1922 NRA re-entry matches he wins a gold medal!



In case the Cpt. Herman Thomas connection was not of interest to you (it was to me!) the revolver has one more piece of interesting provenance - who the factory letter was originally addressed to…it was addressed to one of the all-time giants in the S&W collecting community, Gary Garbrecht. When I read up on him, I was honored to have something from his collection. I had heard of him, but I didn't know how incredible his collection was.



For many of you, Garbrecht needs no introduction. For those of you who never heard of him, he had one of the best S&W collections of all time. Garbrecht collected S&Ws for over 40 years. He focused on the S&W No. 3, but he also had many factory engraved pieces including a factory engraved 320 revolver rifle (1 of 2 IIRC), and a RM engraved by Alvin White among many other one of a kind super rare and valuable pieces. If those pieces don’t interest you, he had many of the factory engraved pieces from the S&W display at the 1893 World’s fair aka Columbian Expo which was in Chicago. I wonder how he got so many of those? I assume he bought them as a group from someone else, but perhaps he tracked down that many, one at a time. His collection was truly awe-inspiring. Much of the “bread and butter” of his collection would be center pieces for the majority of us!

I actually found his collection inspirational to me since I have been only doing this for about 5 years now – so I’m still fresh to it all. Of course, it took a lot of money, time, dedication, perseverance, passion, etc. but his collection proved that it COULD be done. It’s a shame that his collection could not have been made into a museum – it was that good. Garbrecht passed away in 2005 of a heart attack while playing golf and his family commissioned his collection to be sold through Amoskeag. His collection was so famous that Amoskeag featured pieces from his collection on the front and back cover of one of their catalogs, Auction No. 49, which occurred on Sept. 24, 2005. I recently bought one of those catalogs to keep with this RM.

Aside from being an incredible collector of ultra-fine S&Ws, Garbrecht was an avid high performance boat enthusiast, former racer, Mercury team manager, etc. He started off as a Mercury Marine test driver, later raced, then later coached teams for Mercury’s boat racing, among other positions and responsibilities he had in the high performance boating world. He was probably more famous for high performance boat racing than he was as a S&W collector. The 3 man team he managed had Reggie Fountain, Bill Seebold, and Earle Bentz - under Gary's leadership and tutelage, they all 3 became some of the best high performance boat racers of all time. They were actually known as the "unbeatables." Their success brought Mercury Marine, and Mercury high performance motors to the forefront, made them famous world wide, and subsequently made Mercury millions of dollars. He was certainly a visionary, realizing many years before then that there was money to be made in the high performance boat racing world.

Here is the man himself, probably speaking to boat racing enthusiasts.



Here he is with the Mercury High Performance boat racing team. Gary is second from right.



Here are the 3 Mercury High Performance boat racing "unbeatables" L-R, Fountain, Seebold, Bentz



Most importantly, Gary was also a beloved father and husband



Garbrecht's untimely death in 2005 was a shock to many. I wish I could have talked to the man. He had to be a very interesting guy and I'm sure he was a wealth of knowledge regarding S&Ws.



Paul and Kevin Hogan, of Rock Island Auction, who are S&W collectors themselves had some discussion about the Garbrecht collection in one of their auction preview videos. They discuss him starting at 18:45:


Here are pics of the front and back cover of the Amoskeag catalog which featured his collection – just look at those S&Ws!




I of course hoped that somehow, someway, this RM that I bought was in that auction catalog. I should have realized that this RM would not be, since he focused on No. 3s, and because it wasn't engraved, a rare barrel length, owned by J. Edgar Hoover, or anything like that I found the page that had 6 of his RMs that were sold that day, and of course, they all were engraved.




The Alvin White RM in those pics is for sale now online – its $16,500 – but hey, how many people have an RM engraved by White? Just one incredible gun of many for Garbrecht.




It was hard for me browsing this Amoskeag catalog to pick a favorite that he had, but I did manage to pick one – a S&W No. 3 which was owned and used by Walter Winans and Ira Paine! Wow! Does it get any better?





This S&W revolving rifle was one of his center pieces – IIRC it was one only 2 known factory engraved examples – of course it also had to be super nice, and in the case! What a gun! Since its factory engraved, it was likely engraved by Gustave Young, one of the all-time greats.







This 320 (bottom in below photo) was featured in one of R.L. Wilson’s books. Many of Garbrecht’s collection made it into books.



Here is another interesting S&W he once owned, but this was sold privately long before he passed away. Garbrecht had the first 44 magnum ever made, which was for exhibition purposes! It was made in the tool room, and was not made to fire since it was made up to be a show piece. It has a filled barrel and actually no mainspring. This piece was completed Jan 1955. Talk about an excellent piece of history! It’s hard to believe that he sold this, but he apparently was that focused on the No. 3 that he let go of some pieces to focus more on those. SN - S121836




He did actually have a few non-S&W pistols that they sold from his collection. This Stevens Conlin pistol was/is magnificent!




Of course, I have a long way to go in this hobby, and I can only hope someday that my collection will end up being HALF as good as Garbrecht’s was. With 3 RMs, and counting, I think I am at least on the right track

Top is the gun of this thread, REG 4952. The other 2 RMs (REG 492 and 493) in the pic below are featured in a thread (link above photo). They are first year, 1935, and consecutive REG numbers which shipped together.

Registered Magnum twins – separated at birth and reunited in 2013 after 78 years!

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}-----Jim----->
~SWCA #2732~

Awesomeness at its finest. Thanks for sharing!

Nice article. Well writen and very informative.
With enough money you can buy the "Best" collection
of anything.

Chuck

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They hold no Quarter

This is one of the most complete and interesting threads
I have been privileged to read.

Everything is outstanding.....especially the fine RM.

Congratulations and thank you for sharing your interest.

John

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I Love This Site

Well done!

What a great read, a great gun and fabulous history lesson.

Thank you for your efforts.

Congratulations on your 3rd RM and a great growing collection. I look forward to reading about your next find.

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Dave

I remember Gary Garbrecht with great fondness. My friend Tom, 230fmj, introduced me to him. At times we would have a three way phone conversation and have many laughs. I bought several guns from him. A third model 44, a RM with 3.5" and 8 3/4ths barrel, etc. He would always send them and tell me to pay him if I liked them. He even offered me that 320 for 30k as I recall. Since that was more than half of my annual salary at the time, I graciously declined. Very interesting man, I miss him.

Amazing post by the way!!!

I learned a lot,thanks for your time and great commentary/pics.

As one that is still learning and expanding my horizons regarding these older revolvers, I commend you for a completely wonderful journey. I am glad to be on this ride.

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I am a sheep dog!
1601 (ret)

First, congratulations on acquiring a great ".357" Magnum with lots of history and taking the time to post a great history lesson about it and my friend, Gary Garbrecht. Gary and I spent many hours in his gunroom admiring his collection, and during 1996-1999 he sold me his collection of 44 Magnums (including the first one) to help finance his move into the collecting of antique S&W revolvers and particularly revolvers displayed at the Columbian Exposition. Gary was also an avid golfer and we spent many hours at Lake Region Yacht and Country Club playing each other for "bragging rights" and $5 a side (bragging rights from winning were most important). I still miss Gary even though he has been gone for over nine years.

Gary's philosophy of collecting was, "If you are going to collect a particular S&W, acquire them all." He was one of a kind and I am better for having known him.

Bill

Wow! Very nice. Top-notch RM, photos, and story. I much enjoyed this very excellent post.
Thanks,
John
Scoundrel and Ne'er-Do-Well in Training
After seeing some of the pictures from the auction catalog(s) and book(s) a fun "what if" post would be "what if you could have all the guns from only one page of a book or an auction catalog?"

Beautiful RM and a great synopsis of the original owner and a well-known past-owner. Great Read

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Kris
OGCA, NRA LM

I am amazed each day at what I learn here. Thanks to all on this forum that share their knowledge.

Great thread and lots of knowledge dolled out. I appreciate it.

As to Gary's great philosophy. Thankfully not many have the bank to do it so guys like me can once and a while pick up a scrap here and there.

As I am finding out, the beauty of the Registered Magnum is often who owned Registered Magnums. The stories are often well matched to how wonderful these guns are.

On a neat side note.....the Mercury Team picture was taken from right next to where I have a home. Love the older pictures.

Regards the target stocks that came with the RM, I have never seen stocks that had the escutcheons checkered ... WOW!

A very interesting report, in all ways. Myself, I would prefer those custom targets - there is just something about the way they look when mounted on the RM that is "right".

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NHI, 10-8.

I saw Julian Hatcher's name and J Fitzgerald's as well in that list.

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John 3:16
WAR EAGLE!

Congratulations on your new RM, and thanks much for the effort you put into researching and writing this brief history.
Jerry

Excellent presentation. Thank you.

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Hue 68 noli me tangere

Posts like yours are the reason why I joined this forum. Spectacular read and congrats on another fine RM.

I have enjoyed all the provenance you have put together and reading this and thinking about all the history of the registered magnums involved just reminds me of why I like this forum and the guys here that collect and this thread is such an education on the early S&W's that I just can't imagine the research you put in to this. Congratulations on a great job.

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James
On the Llano Estacado

Great post and a beautiful gun.

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Mark

Thank you for sharing.

I've always heard "you'll learn something new every day, if your not careful." Thank you for a very interesting presentation. Congrats on that RM.

Thank you for sharing. Beautiful guns.

Beautiful revolver!

I just wish we knew more about it though! Just kidding. I feel as though I walked through a museum. Thank you for your very informative post!

Excellent thread and outstanding gun, Jim. Makes me proud to have a gun that you owned.

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Wayne
Torn & Frayed

Thanks for the early AM reading. Pretty much on track with the theme of the 2015 Symposium. I certainly hope you are planning a trip to Spokane next year

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Dave Th.

Wow. What a story! Thank you. Dave

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Illegitimi non carborundum

Gary and I were great friends and I miss him even today. We not only enjoyed discussing and collecting S&Ws, but playing golf when we visited in Florida. My wife and I still stay in touch with Marcia Garbrecht. Many of the 44 Magnums I have today formerly resided in Gary's collection.

Bill Cross