A Baker's Dozen of Rare Ruger Models

This is a follow up post to my Some Rare Rugers post from last year

This post will center on the Rugers that while rare, enough were made that there is a chance you might come across one.

In no particular order:

Between 1954 and 1958 Ruger offered Single Sixes with "factory engraving". The first batch of 22 were sent to Spain to be engraved. In the meantime, an engraver by the name of Charles Jarred was hired to perform engraving for Ruger. Somewhere around 270 of the guns were engraved, with very few of them (less than 20) having anodized grip frames (most were bare aluminum) like the one below.

The Ruger M77 in 416 Taylor is said to be quite rare, somewhere between 20 and 50 of them were made.

The Ruger Hawkeye pistol was a single shot pistol based on the Blackhawk. Chambered in .256 Winchester Magnum (a .357 Mag necked down to .25 cal), the pistol was only produced for about a year in 1963-64. Only 3,075 were built making them quite collectable.

Barely making this list of Rare Rugers is this Ruger P89X, it's a standard 9mm pistol that also came with the barrel and guide rod/spring assembly for shooting a .30 Luger from the same gun. Only 5750 of these were made.

Ruger produced only 50 of the 5-shot Ruger Alaskan revolvers in .480 Ruger. Photo courtesy of Gunblast

In late 1964 the person whose job it was to assign serial numbers to the Ruger 10/22 made a mistake, they accidentally put the serial numbers as they same ones being given to the .44 Carbine. The serial numbers were in the 89000 range, while the 10/22 was still in the 3 digits (this was the first year for the 10/22). The mistake was caught, but not until around a 1000 10/22s has been improperly marked. Later when the 10/22s serial numbers got to the 89000 range, Ruger put a "D" in front of the serial number to indicate it was a duplicate.

This means two things, a person who collects 10/22s might be lucky enough to get two 10/22s with the same serial numbers (one with a D) from 1964/65 and 1967.

There is one matched set of 10/22 and .44 Carbine that left the factory at the same time and went to the same buyer, see below:

at one point Ruger offered the Single Six in a .17 HMR and .17 Mach2 convertible. Less than 250 were made.

Another somewhat rare convertible was the 10mm/.40 S&W convertible stainless Blackhawk. Offered by Lipseys only 1175 made in 4 5/8" barrel and 1448 in 6 1/2" barrels like the one below.

Ruger produced the Mini-14 in .222 Remington for export to countries that didn't allow civilian use of military ammo (like Mexico). A few of them were sold stateside, but the actual production numbers are not known, they are considered rare though.

The 44 Carbines with the Finger Groove Sporter stock are said to be rare, even more rare are those with factory checkering.

There were only 77 of the 45 caliber, stainless New Model Blackhawk convertibles with a 5.5" barrel, I found this one for sale on Armslist.

The Gold Label was a hammerless side by side shotgun introduced in 2002 in 12 gauge only. The gun was not very popular and in 2006 it was dropped from the catalog. These are considered somewhat rare as only 3,361 of them were produced during its 3-year run.

Col. Rex Applegate, a retired US Army Colonel and friend of Bill Ruger, had formed a company in Mexico named Armamex to import guns into Mexico. His company received the guns in Texas, disassembled them, brought them across the border (complying with import restrictions) where they were blued and reassembled along with applying the Armamex stamp. There were only 200 of these in pistols created this way. One went to Bill Ruger's personal collection, today only 12 are known in private collections. Photo courtesy of American Rifleman.

Made In Mexico: The Armamex Ruger Story | An Official Journal Of The NRA (americanrifleman.org)

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