Soon to be new to me 6450 but comes with a mystery

[chris.413]

I was at my local gun store and put the below on lay a way. I looked in the S&W Reference book and may of found that this S&W 6450 maybe a transition model that was made for the RSR distributor in 1991.
The mystery begins with the S&W label. It states Features: USED GUNS, Spec Ord: USED? I called S&W customer service to see they had a record of why the gun was marked USED from the factory. They stated their records to do go back to the early 90's and they have no record of this 645/6450 TBUxxxx was ever returned.
Has anyone ever seen a SW label state Features: USED GUNS, Spec Ord: USED? If it were returned to the factory is there anyway to find out why it was returned?

Thank you in advance.

 

[LVSteve]

Could USED be an acronym? USED - Military and Government

 

[BruceB]

I'm certainly not an expert on these, but if you look at the "Complete 3rd Gen Model List" in our Notable Posts section, there are two entries for 6450, both from the 1988 time frame, with '10371x' product codes and 'TBxxxxx' serial number ranges. Both entries show very small production numbers so you might have a moderately scarce example.

 

[CH4]

Cool find
Never heard of that model. Besides being rare, what makes it special?

 

[stansdds]

Cool find
Never heard of that model. Besides being rare, what makes it special?

These were from the pilot run of Model 4506's. The receivers were still being stamped as Model 645, only 300 made.

 

[demkofour]

Over on the Smith & Wesson Collectors Association side of the Forum, Roy Jinks started a thread about the RSR guns a couple of years ago… here's a screen shot of his initial post, with models and production numbers. As can be seen, if it is an RSR gun, the serial number begins with the triple alpha prefix of RSR (I didn't put a link to the post, as I believe you need to be a member of the SWCA to see the post(s):

 

[GaryS]

IIRC, guns used as samples, sent out for evaluation, and so on were marked as USED since they were in fact used even if they weren't sold.

Used guns were supposed to have a letter U stamped on the frame under the grips somewhere.

There are a couple of threads here that mention that. One of them is from earlier this week.

 

[BLUEDOT37]

Has anyone ever seen a SW label state Features: USED GUNS, Spec Ord: USED?
If it were returned to the factory is there anyway to find out why it was returned?

I posted about it here:

S&W 4013 - "U" is for Used Gun

.

 

[chris.413]

Just got the gun out of lay away jail and found the " U " stamped on the bottom of the trigger guard. Thank you everyone for the information. Greatly appreciated.