Thanks Lou - I believe that colt saa answered all your questions.
I found this gun on another gun forum, misidentified, and purchased it a couple months before Smith introduced the 929 at SHOT. It came to me with plain JM grips (no R,W & B or JM initials) in a non-matching blue plastic case, but with all the accessories, including about a dozen S&W moon clips - which I have found work the best with the Starline brass I use.
This is my USPSA and ICORE gun and has been modified as such. Those are KSD grips and an LPA rear sight mated with a Dawson Precision .100" FO front sight. That's a CCW cylinder release and Dave Olhasso tuned the action and converted it to DAO. I'm kind of perplexed as to the difficult extractions noted above - aside from Dave chamfering the charge holes nothing else has been done to the cylinder AFAIK and I've never had a problem. I would think a simple honing of the chambers would correct that on those that had the problem.
Currently using 160 gr RN .357" Bayou bullets over Clays (I have to look up the actual load) with Federal deep seated primers.
Philbrook3 came the closest to actually answering my question and it kind of squares with what I heard - and I don't remember where. I had heard that there were two production runs of the 627's of 300 guns each. My serial number (assuming chronologically numbered guns) would put mine in the first (or only if phibrook3's info is correct) production run. I was just looking for something more definitive.
Thanks for the responses thus far. Anyone with any further info, please chime in. Thanks.
Adios,
Pizza Bob