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"Crown Over 30" Mark on Toe of S&W .455 "2nd Model"
Last edited by jmoore; 06-25-2011 at 07:22 PM.
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06-25-2011 07:20 PM
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I would be inclined to think this would be a good candidate for a Smith & Wesson factory letter. As you say no other Brit markings so it never made it to the U.K. to receive all the acceptance proofs and government property markings. I'd lean toward this theory: British inspector basically give the gun the once over upon arrival in England, slaps his inspection stamp on the revolver, then packs it back up in the shipping box for shipment along with a number of similar revolvers for issuance to another Commonwealth member nation. If Inspector 30 only handled a small number of these revolvers at the end of the Hand Ejector MkII production run for the British contracts this would account for the scarcity of the marking on extant examples. Like Canada, other Commonwealth countries may very well have received shipments of these revolvers that were paid for by the nation in question and not by the British government, so beyond a pro forma inspection for quality by Inspector 30, the revolvers might never had any other marking applied by the final end user. In essence, the revolver was NEVER in British inventory, only inspected then shipped to another user.
The S&W Hand Ejector revolvers also figured prominently in the Irish Civil War. Perhaps it's a revolver sent over to issue to the RIC or the Black 'n Tans. After all these were not strictly British military units in the classical sense and the revolvers would have not been proofed except such a marking to denote the weapon had indeed passed through the hands of HM Government at some stage of play before issue. Kinda a sanitized weapon, if you will, of uncertain pedigree or provenance.
Just a thought.....
Last edited by barbarossa; 07-02-2011 at 12:29 AM.
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I wonder if there's a volume discount for factory letters? I two or three oddballs that need some research, but they aren't military.
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Thanks for the additional photos and info! Maybe one day we will figure out what makes these late production revolvers different as regards their service life.
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The CROWN/30 mark is a Canadian inspector mark. S&W had a contract for 14500 with Canada. Crown/numeral mark appears on Ross rifles.
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