"Look for a company that:
--makes a fantastic product
--has some manner of a shaky business or operational plan
and
--falls on it's face or otherwise shoots itself in the foot
...and that's your recipe for finding the next Python."
The last piece of the recipe for "next Python" is that it doesn't already have an undeserved reputation. I would have submitted the MaTeBa company for Exhibit A, but they have since claimed an even greater mantle of "Python-eity" than the Colt itself. Well made pistols, no doubt about it, but hardly deserving of the same respect as Korth's and such that were flat-out made nicer (i.e. the price is due to rarity, not reputation)
I instead submit the offspring of Ghisoni's (of MaTeBa) M2006 revolver, the Chiappa Rhino, as the next "Greatest Thing We Didn't Love Until it was Too Late." We have a great concept, solid design, poor business decisions (early on, QC was sacrificed to make deliveries, an infamous RID-gate scandal culminating in the distributor calling its customers "tin foil hatters," and little to no marketing of such a new and controversial gun was paid for). As far as I know, the company is currently selling the revolvers well, but who knows for how long. It seems doubtful there is enough interest to keep them in production for many years (it's also probably the most complicated/expensive thing Chiappa makes).
I predict that market exposure will gradually increase sales to the point where Chiappa thinks it's got a cash cow, at which point they will over expand their production, lose a bundle when they don't sell for what they promised the Board, and abandon the project for the next whiz-bang idea.
PS; I giggle a bit when I hear Pythons described as "Rolls Royces or Cadillacs." There is a gross difference in quality between those two. Like between a Rizzini and a Purdey SxS shotgun. One is a very nicely made execution, one is a museum grade manifestation of human skill and spirit that you crudely blast stuff with
. I've seen Pythons, and heard many more accounts of them; they were very well made revolvers with pleasing aesthetics. They were not the pinnacle of gunsmithery, now and forever, like many wish to believe based on today's rarified prices. They were a very well made, and even more expensive/difficult to make, product, which was unable to justify its place in the market any longer (for a number of reasons, both gun-related and not). A Prince of Revolvers --not a God-Emperor of Revolvers
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