Club Obi Wan

I am frankly astonished at the prices being paid for screen used "firearms".
I put that in quotes because in most cases, the items in question were once regular cartridge loading, projectile firing real guns, legally "firearms". Stembridege and all of the other large and small film armorers took these cheap guns and used them sometimes unaltered and often (Star Wars blasters) heavily altered to the point of rendering them only capable of firing blamks or even being non-firing. To gun folks, they are virtually useless. I used to regularly attend the Knob Creek Gun Shoot (google it) . It is the free-worlds largest full-auto show and shoot. A number of years ago, the Austin sub-machine guns that were made into the Stormtrooper blasters were sitting unsold with certificates of authenticity and crazy-low prices. I shudder to think what these abominations are worth today.
Aside from the serial number, any similar gun can be made into a SA replica. Buy the cheapest one you can find and have fun restoring it.
Cheers,


Rambler

I saw a film once that had some dialog that went something like this:

'This is a Zippo. You can buy it for ten bucks. But what if I were to tell you that it used to be owned by Franklin Roosevelt? Now it's worth a lot more. It has historicity.'

This is a little different from the scene about burying the watch. In the Indy film, a commonplace object becomes valuable because of its age. In the scene I'm remembering, it's because of the item's previous ownership. In the case of screen-used guns (or anything else), it's not the intrinsic value of the thing; it's that this specific item was used in this specific film.

There's nothing wrong with buying the cheapest example of whatever and transforming it (if it needs transforming) into something virtually identical to the same item used onscreen. But it's still not going to be the very one used onscreen.

As an old girlfriend used to say, 'It's all what's most important to you.'

Who knows, maybe in a thousand years, you'll be worth something.

Of course, I understand the idea of collectibility. I have collected some pretty silly things myself over the years. But, since I like to use firearms and I appreciate their value as a collectible item, as is, it is the modification that bothers me a little. I was mostly referring to how they had lost their appeal and value as a shootable firearm. It is only the serial number and laws requiring dealers and gunsmiths to record those numbers that can establish the provenance of a firearm as screen used.

When the screen firearm is/was a fully automatic weapon such as many of the Star Wars guns, it reduces drastically the number of potential fan buyers due to the increased paperwork and regulations for something that would often take a great real of money and effort to restore to firing condition.

I suspect that many non-serialized collectible, vintage items are repros now. In a way, the serialized nature of guns probably only increases auction prices because of the near certainty of its screen use.