Which one you guys bought this one?
http://www.gunbroker.com/item/631449096

Wow! Sold for almost $4K. I had no idea any 686 would go for that.

Interesting...

Thanks for posting that nugget of info!

I gather from the description that if someone had a 686 with the serial number AAA00**, they'd have sumthin' speshul?

That's Python territory prices. Amazing..

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My Daddy was a pistol..

I was under the impression that the earliest 686s have pinned barrels. True???

I don't believe any L frames were ever pinned.

Earlier than #191?

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~ S&W aficionado in training ~

I wonder if Smith & Wesson will repair what appears to be an "Under clocked "barrel.

L frames never had pinned barrels or recessed cylinders. I once looked at a 686 with a serial in the low 400's. It had been well used or I would have bought it just for the low serial number.

That is a beautiful gun, but someone really wanted it!

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Richard Gillespie
FBINA 102

Kinda looks that way doesn't it?

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"I gots to know"

It seems that from a collectors standpoint the early s/n guns are highly sought after. Must be in order to pay that kind of money. The seller must have had to pinch himself.

Ship dates trump serial numbers for earliest DOB but number chasers drive that niche market,
I have a friend that chases family initials.

I understand the interest in a low s/n. The funny thing is, after studying s/n's and ship dates for many years, it was often a common practice, with any three letter prefix, for S&W to start at the higher numbers and work backwards to the lower numbers.

In other words, it was the higher number s/n's that shipped first. This was not a hard and fast rule written in stone, but it is something frequently seen.

The gun in question, in post #1, is obviously an very early gun. Besides the s/n, it's in an old style two-piece box with a handwritten label. That was common in 1980 and 1981. By early 1982 the one-piece box became standard, and the old style two-piece box faded away and was only used occasionally as inventory was used up.

Plus, the gun has the S&W logo on the right side. Like an N-frame. On L-frames the logo moved back and forth for awhile. The earliest L-frames more likely had the logo on the right side. By 1983/1984 it had pretty much settled on the left side. It's still there today.

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~ S&W aficionado in training ~

If someone had asked me what would drive a 686 to $4k, I would have said the Apocolypse before serial number.

Nevertheless, value is in the eye of the beholder. Some of my firearm investments would likey raise eyebrows around here.