Colt Combat Python 3-Inch - 357 Mag

The barrel rollmark is what gives this one away. COMBAT PYTHON, in Colt's own script, on a 3-inch tube that the factory only built for one customer. Lew Horton Distributing in Southboro, Massachusetts commissioned this run, and the accompanying Colt Archive letter spells it out: shipped March 10, 1988, one of 43 guns in that particular shipment, with the special 3-inch barrel and the special COMBAT PYTHON rollmark on the left side. The original edition was meant to run 500 units for Lew Horton, with roughly 300 more produced for the international market. That's the entire world supply of this configuration.

The gun reads like a Python crossed with a working revolver. You get the full vent rib, the heavy underlug, and the deep Colt royal blue that the Hartford polishers were still doing right in the late 1980s. Look at the cylinder flutes and the topstrap and you see that liquid blue depth that defined the platform. The 3-inch barrel sits in a spot most Pythons never visited, short enough to carry and quick to bring up, long enough to keep the balance honest.

It wears factory checkered walnut service stocks with the gold Colt medallions, the round-butt profile that suits the shorter frame. Chambered in .357 Magnum, six rounds, with the red ramp front and the adjustable target rear that every Python carried. The action is the hand-fitted Colt double action that collectors chase, and the bore is bright with strong rifling.

And it comes documented. The original red Colt box, the Python manual, the service station listing, and the Colt Historian's letter tying the gun to its Lew Horton shipment all travel with it. For a Python collector, the 3-inch Combat is one of the harder configurations to land, and landing one with the paper to back it is the part that matters most.