I am not trying to pick things apart, but the other thing i noticed was the "blue" of the heads of some of the screws to me don't quite match the patina of the rest of the revolver. Now on the other hand, quite possible i am off base.
what intrigues me about this stuff is a early 44.40 i have that the barrel was cut down. The head of the colt collectors group in the state saw it and called it an "indian gun" in that indians often did that to early colts. I ain't good enough to know the truth of it. I should post a picture for comment.
That's a good catch. Those screws are Nitre blued and with the heads sticking out as far as they do, they should wear much faster than anything else around. Color Case is MUCH tougher than Niter bluing. So what does that mean?
They could be replaced screws. Why? Beat's the hell out of me. Not unreasonable that in the lifetime of a SAA that old that a screw or two would break or some other reason need to be changed (buggered up, etc.). But all 3, that's odd.
These old guns are the proverbial "enigma wrapped in a mystery". I've seen fully authenticated originals that have had weird anomalies like that. Where everyone agrees the gun is righteous, but not one person can come up with a solid reason why something is out of place.
The owner could have decided to take the gun apart at some point and completely trashed a screw. Or lost one, and then realized when he bought a replacement, the 3 wouldn't match; so bought a set of 3 replacements. Just no way to tell.
That's one thing I miss from Arkansas. A friend who deals in fine guns occasionally gets these mysteries, and it's all kinds of fun to try to unwrap the mystery.
