laststandonzombieisland

When it hit the market in 1955, the Colt Python was perhaps a high-water mark of sorts when it came to combat wheelguns and to this day was one of the few hand-fitted modern revolvers to be factory produced for the commercial market. Early Colt advertisements characterized the beefy .357 Magnum-caliber six-shooter as, “A finer gun than you actually need,” and its list of standard features set it apart from many of its pencil-barrel contemporaries.

(Photos: Richard Taylor/Guns.com)

Featuring a full underlug with a shrouded ejector rod, ventilated rib barrel, and adjustable sights, Pythons are distinctive and quickly identified at a glance. The first catalog price on the guns was $125 — about three weeks pay at a time when the price of a gallon of gasoline was 23 cents.

Sadly, Colt began trimming back on making the big I-Frame in 1996, switching from standard production of the classic model to the more limited Ultimate Python and Python Elite models. These late models soldiered on for another decade in declining numbers until the vaunted snake gun fell from the company’s catalog altogether after 2006.

However, we had a bunch of them in the warehouse lately at GDC so I put a piece together on them, which led to the usual gratuitous Python spread…

Enjoy!