I see there are several older threads about these guns, but rather than add to an old thread I figured I would start a new one.
I took a chance on a very nice Hawes Western Marshal in .45 Colt this weekend at a gun show. It is a single action revolver made in Germany by J.P. Sauer & Sohn for Hawes Firearms. I wasn't sure what I had so I started researching the Hawes Marshal line. The general consensus seems to be that they are decent quality guns. As far as I can tell, they were made in .22LR, .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum, and .45 Colt (some with 45ACP cylinder). Hawes was in business from about 1967 to 1980. The serial numbers used in these guns can't be dated very well, it seems. The serial numbers use a format of either XXXXX/# or #/XXXXX, where the # is a single digit, 2 through 8, that denotes the caliber. So a serial number of 12345/3 would be a .357 Magnum. I looked online to examples of these guns and made note of their calibers and serial numbers. In all I looked at 40 guns. It became clear that 2 was for a .22LR, 3 was for a .357 Magnum, 4 was for a .44 Magnum, and 5 was for a .45 Colt.
The gun I bought had a serial number of XXXX/8. More searching resulted in learning that my gun, with adjustable sights, was initially called a Western Marshal Target Model and later called a Chief Marshal. I found only 9 examples of Target Model/Chief Marshal's online and found their serial numbers indicated chambering by a 6 for .357 Magnum, a 7 for .44 Magnum, and an 8 for .45 Colt. It appears that the Chief Marshal was introduced in 1969 and there seems to be far fewer of them than the other fixed sight models. I found only 4 in .357, 3 in .44, and 2 in .45 (including mine).
I took a chance on a very nice Hawes Western Marshal in .45 Colt this weekend at a gun show. It is a single action revolver made in Germany by J.P. Sauer & Sohn for Hawes Firearms. I wasn't sure what I had so I started researching the Hawes Marshal line. The general consensus seems to be that they are decent quality guns. As far as I can tell, they were made in .22LR, .357 Magnum, .44 Magnum, and .45 Colt (some with 45ACP cylinder). Hawes was in business from about 1967 to 1980. The serial numbers used in these guns can't be dated very well, it seems. The serial numbers use a format of either XXXXX/# or #/XXXXX, where the # is a single digit, 2 through 8, that denotes the caliber. So a serial number of 12345/3 would be a .357 Magnum. I looked online to examples of these guns and made note of their calibers and serial numbers. In all I looked at 40 guns. It became clear that 2 was for a .22LR, 3 was for a .357 Magnum, 4 was for a .44 Magnum, and 5 was for a .45 Colt.
The gun I bought had a serial number of XXXX/8. More searching resulted in learning that my gun, with adjustable sights, was initially called a Western Marshal Target Model and later called a Chief Marshal. I found only 9 examples of Target Model/Chief Marshal's online and found their serial numbers indicated chambering by a 6 for .357 Magnum, a 7 for .44 Magnum, and an 8 for .45 Colt. It appears that the Chief Marshal was introduced in 1969 and there seems to be far fewer of them than the other fixed sight models. I found only 4 in .357, 3 in .44, and 2 in .45 (including mine).
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