These guns were built like bank vaults. Very solid, with lots of precision. Kind of like Swiss watches of old. You can't go strictly by Blue Book, because the market varies depending on demand, which is fickle. One thing to keep in mind is that any pre-1980s Colt revolver will require periodic adjustments by someone who knows his way around pre-1980s Colt revolvers, and those people are becoming scarce. If it is not periodically adjusted, they will tend to develop problems in timing, which could cause a malfunction. It's just the way they were built. A lot of precision requires a lot of maintenance. Smith and Wesson revolvers are hardier designs. If you don't want the expense of periodically sending your Colt to a specialist, then consider a snub nosed Model 10 instead (pre-MIM and pre-key hole). They are not as compact, but unless abused, should never require more than keeping them clean and lubed. Worse comes to worst, a layman can learn to take one apart and do whatever might become necessary to fix it, i.e., you don't need to be a master colt revolver specialist to open it up and do what's needed. That said, the Detective Special is a very special little gun, and worth the trouble of maintaining correctly. I have two of them.
