The manufacturing date can only be determined by looking up the serial number in the Floor Foreman's Day Book in the archives at the Conn. Valley Historical Museum in Springfield. MA. The factory historian, Roy Jinks, can provide you a factory letter showing the shipping date for the gun, for $50. S&W did not ship guns in serial number sequence so estimating ship dates from known gun's ship dates is chancy. Serial number 254661 was shipped in Aug. 1927, 256062 shipped in Feb. 1926 and 257348 in April 1932. So the best guesstimate for your gun would be that it was born sometime in the last half of the 1920s. Ed.
