It would appear that wherever I go on the Inter Web I have a talent for kicking over hornets' nests! Here we are on our second page for this topic in less than a week!
To review what I think we know here, in the late '80s Buckeye Sports announced that they would bring out a series of combo (two cylinder) Blackhawks in the less available calibers; with one cylinder for each to be one of the old Nineteenth Century hyphenated calibers (the 32-20, 38-40, and 44-40.) They would come out one a year and buyers of the first would have the option of reserving the same serial number in the second and so on. The first year's release had a production count of 5202 and the second about a thousand more, but the market response was somewhat tepid with slow overall sales, leading to cancelation of plans to produce the third, 44 caliber variant. There was a small run of 44 combo guns made and sold through another vendor (Williams??) but Ruger didn't even make enough of the 44-40 cylinders to use up the frames that had been made and marked for that run.
Historically Ruger had made (and done reasonably well with) combo Blackhawks in 45 ACP and 45 Colt as well as 357Mag and 9 mm issues in smaller numbers, but the less well loved (as in "only by real enthusiasts") 32, 40, and 44 combinations just didn't seem to spark the market like their more well established siblings and their productions sort of "died on the vine," leaving them to become rare enough to be sought after by collectors and shooters of such arcane calibers later.
It is worth noting again that each of these three "unsuccessful" combos included one of the archaic hyphenated calibers from the previous century. With Bill Ruger's long established skill at tapping into the nostalgia of things old and classical, it should have been a safe bet that these would have been a roaring success. I guess there really is no predicting the fickle nature of the gun buying public.
Thanks to all who contributed to this examination of one small aspect of the history of the Ruger Blackhawk.
Froggie