We used to say that RG stood for “rotten gun”. They were probably the worst guns ever imported.
Some of the German revolvers were pretty good. The various Hawes were nice guns. I still wish I had ordered one of the Herters revolvers back in the early 60s. I think the .401 Powermag was only around $30 or so.
I have seen a couple of them at gun shows and they were very well made, pretty amazing in fact for the price. They were actually manufactured by J.P. Sauer and Son. The same company which makes the Sig/Sauer guns now.
***We used to say that RG stood for “rotten gun”. They were probably the worst guns ever imported.***
Two other makers of trash guns were EIG, and IMP (Imperial Metal Works.
Quite a lot of the Spanish made guns were real junk. STAR pistols seemed to be ok.
Many of the Spanish revolvers looked just like a S&W. Look close and you will notice in real small letters, made for the SMITH & WESSON cartridge. Smith and Wesson is in real big letters.
That's right... the Hawes and Herter's SAs were made by J.P. Sauer, weren't they? The grips were just different enough from a real SAA that you could tell by looking, but like you say, they were fairly well-made guns. IIRC, Interarms imported some of them before going belly-up.
A buddy had an RG that had arrived in his parents' mail (pre-GCA68) by accident, and I was the only person in our group that seemed to ever hit anything with it (and then only by luck). It would only take a .22LR round if the bullet had been filed down, so whenever he ran out of .22 Shorts, he'd trim LRs to fit. We. Were. Dumb.
Mr. niteowl77