I bought both of my 66s used and got GREAT bargains! All the Taurus bashing is a good thing for Taurus prices, I guess. I got my 4" nickel 66 used about 6 years ago. It's tight as a drum, perfect timing, no play anywhere. It has a wonderfully smooth action and is the newer transfer bar lockwork. This guns shoots my 148 grain WC handload .38 into 1" for a full cylinder at 25 yards with regularity. I have a Pachmayr Gripper on it, took the woods off. The stocks it came with were not comfortable. Actually, I prefer the Hogue Monogrip, but Padhmayr Grippers are good, too. I carry this gun afield as a hiking/outdoor gun, superb accuracy for small game with .38s and powerful with magnum rounds. I gave $197 and change for this one and the finish only has one little weak spot in it on the cylinder from a holster, hardly can tell, have to look real close.
The 3"er was at a recent gun show last fall. I'd been looking for a 3" Smith K frame, but they're rare and valuable, so figured if I ran across another Taurus or another M971 Rossi 2.5"er, I might leap. Well, this one fellow had a blued 3". Has the hammer block lockwork which isn't quite as smooth in DA as the newer gun. It had some crane play and a timing issue on one cylinder. He wanted 200 for it and I thought I might be able to fix the timing or send it off to Taurus and it didn't look as if it'd was bad enough to affect function anyway, so I showed him this and he took $180. I got the thing home, playing with it, found someone had taken the side plate off and put it back together with the wrong screws in the wrong holes. The front screw is elongated and impinges on the crane to hole it in place, the source of the crane play AND the timing issue. Once I put it back together right, all play was gone, just the slightest hint of a little end shake, about .0015" worth, and timing is perfect. This gun has been fired a lot and has lots of holster wear. I can tell it's been fired a lot because it had an old Pachmayr gripper on it and the molded checkering on the back of the grip was worn smooth from shooting. Yet, it's very tight, probably a 20 year old gun. Don't listen to the taurus bashers, this thing is twice the gun of the M19 Smith I had. For one thing, there's no flat spot on the bottom of the barrel where the Smiths tend to crack. I've seen this happen on a M10. This also indicates to me that there is more room in the frame for the barrel since the flat spot on the Smith is for clearance of the cylinder/crane. IOW, the frame is slightly larger/beefier than a Smith K frame. Yet, this blued 3" is pretty light and easy to carry. I LOVE the 4" gun, like new and fantastic action. The 3" gun is a very good gun, slightly more wear and a little rougher trigger, but the toughness of the gun is evident by this thing. I took that old worn Pachmayr off and installed a Hogue Monogrip on this one and was carrying it a lot IWB until I got a Ruger SP101 a few months ago. The Ruger is a little easier to carry and it's stainless, I like stainless. I'm keeping the old 3" 66, though, quite an accurate gun. It puts those wadcutters into almost as tight as the 4", about an inch and a half off sand bags at 25 yards, and it handles the magnums accurately, too. One thing I like about this one is it shoots the .38s almost to the same POA (slightly lower with the wadcutter, slightly higher with a 158 grain +P SWC) as my .357 loads. I have marks on the elevation screw on my 4" gun for wadcutter and magnum. They're about 6 clicks difference.
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