I generally don't care for ivory... but (obviously), the pictured guns look awfully good.
I
really don't care for Stag, but the color tone and pattern on the pictured one looks very,
very nice!
In "exotic" grips, my tastes run to Pearl, which seems to be the redheaded step-child of the group. The famous quote from Patton certainly did nothing to up it's "street cred."
My Grandfather bought a Smith & Wesson Hand Ejector Military & Police Model of 1905 Fourth Change in 1923 and the factory letter I got from Roy Jinks says the gun was shipped in 1921 to a hardware store around 200 miles from where my Grandfather told me that he purchased it. (FWIW, he told me he paid $35 for it in 1923 -- does anyone have an opinion on what prices might have been like for that revolver at that time? He was 90 years old when he told me the story.)
In any case, all research points to the idea that he purchased it used and for the entire life of anyone in my family that can remember, it wore genuine mother of pearl grips, no Smith & Wesson emblem in them. I had been under the assumption that he simply went to buy a handgun and this one, wearing these grips, caught his eye. Grandpa was simply never a "gun guy" or a recreational shooter and I knew this. When he gave the revolver to me as a High School graduation gift, I simply had to ask him: "What made you decide to buy this in the first place?" and his reply was simple and genuine. "Well, in those days, a man had a gun."
I relayed this story to my Mom and commented on the classy pearl grips but also lamented the fact that the original issue wood stocks were gone and that Grandpa must have bought the gun exactly as it appeared and she was very quick to say "Oh
no, I wouldn't say that at all." She claimed that something like that was
precisely his style and something he would have done, maybe even before he walked out of the shop that day. At whatever cost might have been attached.
So I'm led to believe that it -was- my Grandpa that put these mother of pearl on this nickeled six-inch.