Just shy of 8 hours until I find out if my max bid on this sweetheart holds up.
I know nothing about guns but that is a beautiful piece.
It's a Smith & Wesson 686. The 586 and 686 were built on S&W's heavy-duty L frame, and chambered in .357 Magnum. The 586 had a blued finish, and the 686 was brushed stainless steel. This is a 686-3, the third design revision and dates to the early 90's. That makes it desirable because in Rev 4 they added the "Hilary Lock" when they knuckled under to pressure from the Clinton Administration. To this day S&W is putting the keylock on 686s (now in Rev 6), and the lock fucks up the trigger action. But people still buy them because the 686 is arguably the most durable handgun ever built, and unless you've experienced the pre-lock action, you don't know what you don't know.
I had a 686-0 in 1987, when the Warden and I were dating, but traded it for a Ruger Blackhawk. Then a disastrous cross-country music tour in 1988 left me stranded in Seattle without enough money to get home to Tucson. So I had to sell the Blackhawk to a friend to get home, and it was several years before I could again afford to buy a gun.
Regret of all the firearms I ever owned and sold has driven me to replace the ones that got away. It's very hard to do, finding period-correct examples, but I'm down to four. The 686, the Blackhawk, an early 80's Winchester Model 94, and a Zastava Tokarev in 9mm. If this auction goes my way, I'll be down to 3.
The thing about getting old is that you marvel that there were years you couldn't scrape enough money together to afford what was then a $300 gun, and now you don't even think about the fact that it costs $100 to take the wife out to dinner.
I know, retirement will come, and I won't be able to afford it again. But I'll have the guns. ;-)
