You may or may not have heard that Ruger unveiled a much desired Mark IV pistol recently. It mends the number one problem that has plagued many Ruger shooters over the years. You now can field strip the pistol without the need of watching several YouTube tutorials. With the simple push of a button, you can “pop the hood” on the Ruger Mark IV for easy cleaning and troubleshooting. Now that this heavily-requested Mark IV is on the market the Mark III is no longer needed. At least that is what Ruger is quietly saying on their website.

If you are on the Ruger website you can navigate through a few pages and see for yourself. On their homepage, you can click on their Menu and select Customer Service. On the new page you can select Serial Number History and Instruction Manuals. Finally, you can select Pistol Instruction Manuals & Product History. There you can see that all of the variations of the Mark III are “Out of Production” as of 2016.

What this basically means is whatever Mark III pistols that are still left at distributors and gun shops are it. If you really want a Mark III before they are gone, your time is limited. An image of what you will find on Ruger’s website can be seen below.

A lot of people have speculated as to why Ruger finally made an easier to dis-assemble rimfire pistol. The best conspiracy theory without getting an official statement from Ruger is the Smith & Wesson SW22 Victory prompted Ruger to create the Mark IV. With the easy takedown on the Victory many people believe the new Mark IV is Ruger’s response to compete.

So for now you may not own a collector item, but in 30 years, who knows. Hang onto your Ruger Mark III pistols and you might have something pretty desirable!