My, my, how could that be...
How that could be is the company considered them trash and ordered them disposed of. Someone donated them to the library instead. That happens. The Pres/CEO of a company I worked for directed me to have some old computer equipment hauled to a dump. Instead, I found a charity that could make use of it.
That is what you don't seem to understand (or want to accept): There are plenty of ways it could have happened, and plenty of reasons why.
At least you did some research before responding this time. If you would have dug a bit deeper you would have noticed this donation was made by Colt back in 1957 -- when many of its DA revolvers were in production -- definitely not a time when they would have been donating what we have been talking about -- engineering drawings, process specs, master gauging, etc. (at least for current models.)
In any event I have absolutely no question that Colt's assets include engineering drawings for just about any gun they produced in the 20th and 21st Centuries, process specifications (many of which I'm sure are still in use), master gauging, etc. Sure would be interesting to see the Morgan Stanley list so all this "trashing" nonsense can be put to bed once and for all.
Since I do recail reports that they were trashed/discarded/disposed of, I have doubts and will continue to have them until it is demonstrated (not just argued) otherwise. You are welcome to do the research that would require.
Yes, I'm sure they have all the drawings for what they currently have in production, and perhaps for the Anaconda since it was designed for modern manufacturing. But any of the other revolvers? Or the Woodsman? Well, we now know where some of those records might be.
The more important point is that even if they do still exist and are in Colt's possession or can be reacquired, they still have little value except as collectors items. Almost all of the guns I mentioned were designed a produced during a time when labor was cheap and machinery was expensive. Their production methods were designed to take advantage of this. But modern methods are the exact opposite. Cheap machines, expensive people. To build a Python today using the original design and production methods would result in a gun few would pay the price for. With low demand, Colt would be upside down very quickly because while machines can be shut down, people are expensive, both to keep around or lay off.
They could perhaps redesign the Python to make production costs more reasonable by scaling down the Anaconda, but the result would not be the same quality customers would expect from a Python so there is the quesiton of how much interest there would be. Especially with S&W and Ruger making guns that would probably be competive in both price and quality. I love Pythons, but I would buy something just becasue it carried the rollmark.
