A little update on the GH-34 early bull barrel Service Six.
Yesterday, I was looking through old pictures and I found a few long forgotten pics I had taken out in Colorado. We had gone out there to visit my mom in 2007 and while there, I somehow caught wind of a fellow in the next town over who was selling his Ruger collection. He was probably in his 70's and he said he had stage 4 cancer, and he didn't want his wife to have to deal with the guns after he passed. I was typically gun-poor the time, but I bought as many as I could afford. He had collected some rare revolvers, mostly stainless, both SA and DA. I recall specifically that I got a very rare boxed GF92 Service Six in 9mm from him, and a fairly rare boxed KNR9. I also got some memorabilia and maybe a couple more guns. I told him I would ask around to see if I could find buyers for more of his stuff and took a half dozen pictures of what he had. I do remember a guy on this forum bought a lot of the memorabilia.
So yesterday I popped open those pics and this caught my eye:
It is almost exactly in the center of that pic. Another GH-34 gun in the 152 prefix, with the notation "Bull" on the shipper to denote the heavy barrel.
You can also see another shipper marked GA-34H in the 153-prefix marked "Bull" right below it. The "H" designating the Heavy barrel was moved to the end of the catalog number for later production, and on that one (a Security Six) shows it already there by the 153 timeframe. Of course, marking both a Service Six and a Security Six with GH would have been confusing, so that may be what led them to move it to the end. The stainless Service Six was normally GF and the Security Six was GA. What I wonder though is whether that Security Six also has the same heavier-than-standard "bull" barrel instead of the one they finally settled on for the H guns (which is not that heavy). You need a good eye to even tell a later H gun from a normal barrel; the difference is subtle.
Then today, I was looking at another one of those pics and found another one, but not in the shipper:
It is the yellow label box at the bottom of the stack on the left
I wish I had known then what I know now. And of course, that I had had more money at the time.
