Probably the rarest "S&W
book" is the large size paperback book showing Roy Jinks' S&W collection, in beautiful color that was printed in Japan about 20+ years ago. A team from the Japanese publisher came to Roy's house and made some arrangements to photo his collection for a book. The photos were taken outdoors of all the guns and there is some shade and shadow issues cast by the way the guns were posed in the bright sun, but it is still an interesting book. Now the downside is that it is printed in Japanese. The publisher did the same for Colt's, Winchesters, Military guns, Police guns, etc. in a series of printings, all aimed at the Japanese market for gun lovers who could not own guns, as they are illegal to own in Japan by ordinary citizens. Now having said all that, I and Alan Dash imported all the issues we could locate in Japan, which was less than 2 dozen copies. The last open sale I know of was at the S&WCA annual meeting auction about 10 yrs ago, for $800 for a copy.( I gave away free copies to my friends when I first got a shipment of about 6 copies, as my cost was about $5 a copy then.) Ed #15
