For many years, I accumulated firearms because I thought they were cool or that my chance to have them was closing or the history they entailed. From bolt-action turn of the century mausers to Colt M4s I meandered getting what I could afford without much real direction. I wouldn't call it collecting as there wasn't a focus.
I obtained my first S&W classic automatic pistol. It was a foreign service 3913. It has a US ordnance flaming bomb stamp on the frame which I have been told meant it was government security service, whether that was CIA or embassy security, there's no telling. But the other classic S&W's came soon after. A model 59 was next, an original Model 39 with box and papers. Since then the collection has grown to include multiple examples from every base model type generation one through three and even a couple examples from 'the dark years,' of the S&W Sigma. I genuinely enjoy collecting them because of the diversity in size and calibers. Unlike collectors of 1911s and Lugers, there's so many variants of the all-metal Smiths.
Finding them at gunshows is part of the fun, but also doing pawn shop crawls in hopes of finding something new and interesting. Smiths are still reasonably priced and reasonably available, so its rare I don't find something at least cool enough to look at and ponder. They're well made, durable, and parts are easily available for fixing the odd bad ejector and so on. They've been on a lot of TV shows and movies from the A-Team to the Terminator and of course Miami Vice. They always fired magic bullets that dropped the bad guys without having to aim much and looked so cool.
My luck the prices will start going crazy and the supply dries up, thats been my luck with most things I start collecting. But while thats not the case, I sure enjoy collecting Smiths, especially old cop trade-ins with the department numbers and marks on them. Its the golden age of classic Smith collecting. Now's the time to have fun without breaking the bank.
I obtained my first S&W classic automatic pistol. It was a foreign service 3913. It has a US ordnance flaming bomb stamp on the frame which I have been told meant it was government security service, whether that was CIA or embassy security, there's no telling. But the other classic S&W's came soon after. A model 59 was next, an original Model 39 with box and papers. Since then the collection has grown to include multiple examples from every base model type generation one through three and even a couple examples from 'the dark years,' of the S&W Sigma. I genuinely enjoy collecting them because of the diversity in size and calibers. Unlike collectors of 1911s and Lugers, there's so many variants of the all-metal Smiths.
Finding them at gunshows is part of the fun, but also doing pawn shop crawls in hopes of finding something new and interesting. Smiths are still reasonably priced and reasonably available, so its rare I don't find something at least cool enough to look at and ponder. They're well made, durable, and parts are easily available for fixing the odd bad ejector and so on. They've been on a lot of TV shows and movies from the A-Team to the Terminator and of course Miami Vice. They always fired magic bullets that dropped the bad guys without having to aim much and looked so cool.
My luck the prices will start going crazy and the supply dries up, thats been my luck with most things I start collecting. But while thats not the case, I sure enjoy collecting Smiths, especially old cop trade-ins with the department numbers and marks on them. Its the golden age of classic Smith collecting. Now's the time to have fun without breaking the bank.
