IF YOU’VE BEEN following the auction scene, you know that Colt snake guns have reached absurd prices. An unfired, new-in-the-box Python in a rare variation could go for an easy down payment on a house. And yet Colt hasn’t unveiled a double-action (DA) revolver for nearly two decades. Why? To greatly oversimplify, the designs we loved then, and which command such eye-popping prices today, were designed when steel, machine tools and labor were relatively inexpensive.
That was the first thought that came to mind when I opened my editor’s mysterious box and found the new Colt Cobra inside. The original Cobra, made from 1950 to 1972 with exposed ejector rod, can be quickly likened to a Detective Special with shrouded ejector rod. The First Issue Cobra was an aluminum-framed, six-shot…