Last year I posted about a Rock Island M200 that I bought, and how for such an inexpensive revolver, I like it a lot.
Well today I found what I had really wanted, an old S&W 10-5 from the mid '70s, for only $30 more than I paid for the Rock Island. The grips are rough and the finish is spotty, but mechanically it feels great. The bore looks perfect and the trigger is, well, a S&W (perfect). It has little bit of endshake but not bad, and timing is great. As much as I like the little Rock Island revolver, this beat up old police trade-in S&W is in a whole different class.
One question I had was that this S&W is a Century gun. It had a small importer stamp on the butt identifying it as such, and some kind of department stamp on the frame in front of the trigger guard: "JF 60". Based on this, I assume it's an old foreign police gun that's been re-imported. Anyone have any idea where it might have come from? I remember reading some years back that a bunch of them came back from Hong Kong, but that was quite a while back.