A better photo of the Shorty 40 Mark IIIS. This is the fourth gun of a 612-piece run done for Lew Horton in '96-'97.
There were 3066 Shorty 40's of all types (original, Mk.II, Mk.III, Mk.IIIS) made from '92 through '97. The originals are the most common, with nearly 1600 made, while the rarest are the Mk.II guns from '95, with only 220 examples built.
For anyone into the various Lew Horton special edition guns (which could be a sub-field of Smith collecting all its own), the 4th Edition of the Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson has a detailed table on pp.430-432, listing all models, complete with SKU, production total, serial number range, and years of production.
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