Just got one of the trade-in 66-7's that have been floating around. I have seen a few at gun shows, and I got this in an online deal in a trade for a Dan Wesson Model 15. I don't know where these came from, it seems maybe a Corrections Dept., LE agency or security company cut a bunch of these loose. I plan to put a set of small Pachmayrs on it, this will be one of the few Smiths I have where I don't have a need to put woods on it.

It's holster buffed but hardly seems to have seen a round, very tight, timing is perfect, no endshake and from the 18 rounds of .38 158 gr. I ran through it, it seems to be extremely accurate. Action is heavy but slick in DA and the SA is crisp. Seems to be a keeper, and it will complement the 2.5" 66 made in 1989 that I have in the collection. I would also like to get a new 67 to go with this one.

This is my 4th MIM and IL S&W and I am very happy with it, it's my first 2-piece barrel S&W and I can't wait to wring it out at the range. I doubt I'll notice any accuracy difference over my 1-piece barrel guns, but I am a huge fan of the new S&W's.

Who is selling these?

I got mine from a guy in MN who does a lot of trade in stuff, but I would imagine they may have originated from a distributor like Gulf Coast or one of those.

What I read, is that if a large corrections, security or LE agency buys a large lot of say, S&W M&P .40 pistols, S&W will buy the revolvers back and then just sell them to distributors. Even Glock does this, they buy the older guns and then sell them for whatever they can get to the distributors. This is probably where these 66-7's came from. I have wanted a newer MIM 66 for a while, and had been looking around for used ones. Then, all the sudden in the past month I have seen several of them.

Edit- There's a guy on GB with a bunch of these 66-7's, he says they came from an Australian police trade in.

The 66-7 with a PD trade in 645



Pics of my 66-7, with the Pachmayrs I just added. It's a perfect example of the last production run of the great Model 66 which sadly was dropped in 2003........... I usually like to have "pretty" wood grips on my K-frames, but this 66-7 just has "working gun" written all over it, and Pachmayrs have been a standby on many a working gun over the decades.

A ton of 66-7 were traded in to S&W last April by Australian police departments. Thousands of them. A good fraction of those were 2 1/2 inchers. I got one of those. Many were in great shape -- the Aussie cops don't generally carry their guns on the beat, but keep them locked up unless and until a situation warrants.

Mine is probably one of these, it looks like it's hardly been used.

The guy on GB who has a bunch of them looks like he or someone else polished them up and added various RB Magnas to them.........one of them even has diamond magnas, check it out!

I have a 66-7 4" that I bought new back in '05 or thereabouts. I got it for IDPA competition and used it quite a bit for a couple of years. It worked out great, no complaints whatsoever.

I don't think I've ever seen a -7 in 2.5", that'd be a nice one.

I just picked up a 66-7 2.5" from a local LEO it was his personal gun and it was lightly used. I shot it yesterday at the range and I was getting nice accuracy out to 35 yards.