I commented something similar on a piece of meta floating around that used the same stock picture and thus used the word “pearl,” but feel the need to do it again, this time with a full breakdown and receipts.
(Note that this is not intended to discredit the meta or ideas itself, but rather to add to it with supported evidence from things that are in canon)
BUT
THE GUN PICTURED IN THE TOP IS NOT DEAN’S GUN. It’s not even a gun used on SPN, and it frustrates me when it gets shown in articles, moodboards, etc, as Dean’s gun. Ik it shows up when you type in “Colt SPN,” bc so many articles and blog posts have used it as a picture as an example of Dean’s gun—and the reason why is due to an error in the Internet Movie Firearms Database.
If you watch the show repeatedly enough, you’ll know by rote that Dean’s favored gun is a Colt M1911A with ivory sides, meanwhile Sam’s favored gun is the Taurus PT92AFS with pearl handled grips. Both boys use the guns interchangeably, but they start to favor one over the other—and it’s noticed often enough that on the SPN Wiki, the Colt is listed as Dean’s gun and the Taurus is attributed to Sam, due to how frequently they use the respective guns:
So what happened on the IMFDb?
On the IMFDb, Dean’s gun is accurately written out as a custom Colt M1911A1 with ivory sides--even in the screencaps of the show that appear under the weapon listing, you can see the plain ivory (though admittedly it doesn’t help when visibility in the Kripke era is next to nothing)–however the picture right below it clearly shows (and labels!) a Colt MKIV, which if you click the picture, was actually a gun used in a Robert DeNiro movie:
The gun image was uploaded in 2009, where since then, it has often been used as a placeholder image throughout the database—at least 48 times, 15 of which is for SPN:
My guess is that whoever made the pages for SPN didn’t have a clear image of the actual Colt at the time, and used the gun from Machete since it’s another Colt.
And since then, that misattributed image has been used in articles about SPN, moodboards, etc.
ANYWAY
All that said, even though Sam uses the gun more, one of the guns that Dean is shown using that does have pearl handles is the aforementioned Taurus, which he’s first shown using in 1.6, Skin (and is also, at least according to SPN Wiki, the first time the gun is used at all):
(side note that the image of the pearl-handled Taurus PT92AFS on the IMFDb is also used for multiple pages throughout the database, and though the gun image was also uploaded to the database in 2009 by the same contributor, I’m unsure of the source for that image).
Although it becomes Sam’s gun, Dean being the first one to use it, and to specifically use it in Skin–an episode where Dean kills a mirror image of himself, one who is so, so vulnerable and open about all the hurt he feels inside and being tired of his lot in life that he acts on it, where the lines between Dean and the monster become blurred–says something.
We never get an origin story for the guns. Both are in the trunk and present starting in S1 onward, and it’s entirely plausible Dean chose both for himself.
Ivory and mother of pearl are expensive, unique, and arguably rely on cruelty to source (which is fitting for a hunter–and it speaks to the irony of a tool used to kill being dressed up to look beautiful. Guns as tools, Daddy’s blunt instrument… Dean’s pretty looks which are canonically used as a weapon (hi bait boy) and all his masks… you can connect the dots). Maybe the gun is subtle reclamation, maybe it’s a way to express individuality in a culture that projects a very narrow idea of what’s acceptable (we see this more as more hunters appear down the line), maybe he just thought it looked cool. I love that this many years after its ending, we can still discuss different interpretations of aspects of the show based on details like this.
It’s also bad luck to buy mother of pearl for oneself, so I think it’s kind of a sweet hc that Dean bought both at the same time and earmarked the mother of pearl one for Sam to justify it, as a way to also use it for himself.
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