I started researching New York City Police Department firearms in the mid-1990’s.
I was able to make copies of the surviving records, which cover the period from 1921 to approximately 1985. These records allow for a unique insight that factory records from the arms manufacturers do not; they allow us to see who the ultimate end user of the product was.
While most historical letters might say that a gun was shipped to a specific location on a specific date, the trail then grows cold. With very rare exceptions (Zork Hardware records archives, for example), once a gun leaves the factory, it’s whereabouts beyond the shipping destination are lost.
Collectors are very fortunate that, in the case of NYPD revolvers, it is possible to trace a revolvers history well past its departure from the factory and its arrival on a customer’s doorstep.
In this example, we look at Smith & Wesson Military & Police (M&P) #C400763; a generally unremarkable 4-inch Heavy Barrel Square Butt .38 Special revolver.
An examination of the Smith & Wesson factory shipping records show that this gun was shipped on October 2, 1957 to the New York City Police Department.
shipped on October 2, 1957 to the New York City Police Department.
Image courtesy of the Smith & Wesson Historical Foundation.
If the fellow who owns this gun were to ask for a factory letter through the Smith & Wesson Historical Foundation, he would receive a letter stating as much.
If he were to request a “Deep Dive”, he might receive a copy of the shipping invoice showing that this particular gun was one of four hundred in the shipment, the cost was $42.10 per gun and they were all shipped to the NYPD Equipment Bureau at 400 Broome Street in Manhattan.
All very useful information, especially as it confirms the gun is an NYPD gun. Normally, this is where the trail would end. However, the Equipment Bureau records which have survived allow us to see what happened to this revolver after it arrived at the Equipment Bureau in 1957.
Apparently, it sat on the shelves for almost two years before it was taken down, dusted off and sold to Probationary Patrolman #19076……Frank V. Serpico!
M&P #C400763 , Equipment Bureau #7951, was sold on September 14, 1959 to
Probationary Patrolman Frank V. Serpico, shield #19076.
Image from authors archive.
And so a very collectable revolver associated with a famous policeman emerges from the cocoon of obscurity.
Obviously not every gun that went to the NYPD is going to have gone to Popeye Doyle, “Paco” Serpico or Mario Biaggi, but some of the other fellows had some pretty interesting careers and that adds to the historical value of these guns.
The NYPD records are far from complete, but I hold perhaps 60,000 of them. If you want me to run your gun and see if I can put a name with it, contact me at the email address provided. I’ll need the make, model, serial number and any unique stampings that may be on the gun. If it is an NYPD gun and I can document it to a specific user, I can generate a historical letter for you that gives the details of the gun and provides copies of the records I may have. There is no charge for this, but if it helps out your collecting, well, I do have an Amazon Tip-Jar.