I found an almost new looking .44 blackhawk flattop with the 7-1/2 in. barrel in a pawn shop yesterday. serial no. 170xx (I added the xx's cause I've seen everbody else do that) I ran home and gathered up two guns I hate and sold them at ANOTHER gunshop to fund the ruger (i'm 60, laid off, and financially deficit) ...sold a tc. stainless contender with two barrels and a burris scope and a pinned barrel s&w model 63. found some decrepit .44 brass last night and fired off 25 reloads this morning. first rd. hit the 1 inch orange circle I had stuck on a papa john's pizza box at 25 yards. yes, it was a fluke, as the rest never got closer than two inches. now, I find that ruger only made a limited number of the 7-1/2 flattop blackhawks (not the super) and maybe I should not be casually pumping homecast bullets thru it all the time as it may have some collector value because of the barrel length. should I get the factory letter for this, or just use it carefully? i'm not the collector type, but love shooting the oldmodel rugers. oh, and it has NOT been converted to the transfer bar, and never will. yes, I only loaded five at a time today....