I'm fortunate enough to have my choices in the safe already. My first three-inch revolver was a 696, followed soon after by a Lew Horton 24-3. I hadn't been chasing either of them, but they were offered as something that might interest me, and I decided yeah, they did. A couple of years later I lucked into a 625-3 that had been on the consignment shelf at my LGS only a few hours before I spotted it. I immediately said, "I'll take that." Then I asked the counter guy to take it out of the case for inspection. All three of these are in nice shape, but not so nice that I have hesitated to shoot them.
I won't bother with photos since these are stock models that are already well represented above. There is definitely something about a three-inch gun, particularly N frames: heavy enough to be effective, light enough to port comfortably from place to place. If I ever have to sell some of the collection in an emergency, other items would go before I considered releasing one of these.
