I lunch with a group of Viet vets & frustrated drag racers on Thursdays. We rotate between local eateries.......
Little college town just west of here, Rio-Grande, Ohio, has a barbeque specialty place. I think the gal owner is a Viet Vet........anyway, our only colored guy is ALMOST blind. Vickys husband (dont ever remember his name), sat next to blind guy across from me on one occasion couple years ago. After ordering, he came up with a smallish black hard plastic gun case, opened it to expose the gold S&W. Yukky, I thought, some clown ruined an oldy......Then he produced a provenance letter from Roy Jinks at S&W while blind guy looked at the gun.........then it got passed around the table. When it got back to me, I asked to see the provenance letter. Sure enuff, it was one of 10 that S&W had record of from the 1890s. It is .32 Safety Hammerless, First Model, 1891. It went to an outside shop with 9 others for gold plating & pearl grips to fill a special order. Somebody was a country barber in this area back when, and ended up with the gun somehow.
Interesting that one of 10 would show up in the backwoods of Ohio from the New England area...its in my big show case now.!!!!!!
PJH
Little college town just west of here, Rio-Grande, Ohio, has a barbeque specialty place. I think the gal owner is a Viet Vet........anyway, our only colored guy is ALMOST blind. Vickys husband (dont ever remember his name), sat next to blind guy across from me on one occasion couple years ago. After ordering, he came up with a smallish black hard plastic gun case, opened it to expose the gold S&W. Yukky, I thought, some clown ruined an oldy......Then he produced a provenance letter from Roy Jinks at S&W while blind guy looked at the gun.........then it got passed around the table. When it got back to me, I asked to see the provenance letter. Sure enuff, it was one of 10 that S&W had record of from the 1890s. It is .32 Safety Hammerless, First Model, 1891. It went to an outside shop with 9 others for gold plating & pearl grips to fill a special order. Somebody was a country barber in this area back when, and ended up with the gun somehow.
Interesting that one of 10 would show up in the backwoods of Ohio from the New England area...its in my big show case now.!!!!!!
PJH