Dan, Roy Jinks owns, or owned , the majority of the older S&W records, which he acquired from the Wesson family decendents and other sources. Most of these ( approx. 400,000+ pieces of paper,) are stored in the Conn. Valley Historical Museum vaults. The S&WCA has funded something like $150,000 over the years to perserve this material and catalog it, including some 1,500 guns from the factory collections. Not all the paper material is related to actual firearms - a lot of it is just daily business correspondence and other misc. material. One item I remember reading was a letter from D B. Wesson to his tailor complaining the tailor made D.B.'s shorts too tight! For years Roy has said that when he dies, his material goes to the CVHM and Factory letters as we know them, will cease - however some of us have argued with Roy over the years that another solution was possible. A tax exempt entity , Smith & Wesson Historical Foundation, has been founded by Ray Cheely, Jim Supica, Bill Cross, Roy, & others interested in preserving factory archives and historical letters, etc. which will eventually provide funds for digitizing all the gun info into one source, so that when a letter is requested you would get the original shipping info, a copy of the invoice and all other related material, such as work orders for later repairs or alterations to the same gun, etc. This will not happen tomorrow but the wheels are in motion to achieve this goal. See other threads on this site about the S&WHF. Having said all the above, collectors are still getting a bargain at $50 per letter. Roy is 'Retired" from S&W as a factory employee and is a contractor that furnishes historical info. to collectors, etc. plus PR appearances and other functions. The $50 fee covers the factory expenses related to his efforts. S&W management is not interested in having happy campers in the collecting fraternity, but are concentrating on the bottom line in their daily efforts to keep S&W in the black, which is a real chore in today's economy. Factory letters have come a long way in the last 75 years. The first letters I used to get were free, but usually said something like "Yes, you have a S&W revolver and we made it. Thanks for asking." After Roy was hired, they got a little better and were still free, but then they were raised to $5 ! Everbody howled about the big Rip Off! Gradually they went to $15, $20 and $30 and more info. was in each letter. At the now cost of $50, they are still a bargain, and I don't object to any collector who wants to spend $50 to letter any S&W, even if it was made yesterday. In fact. letters on recent production may be somewhat of a rarity as current records are not being kept in a fashion that is easy for Roy to locate, especially rarer guns from the Performance Center. There are other sources of older S&W records, not at the CVHM or in Roy's collection. The Univ. of Massachusetts library has quite a collection and several private collectors have materials purchased at Gun Shows and from dealers. If you have contacts and access to any of those areas, you can do extensive research on older S&Ws sometimes. Dan. you asked "What Time it Is?" and I've told you how to make a watch! Sorry about that! Ed.
