A Most Serendipitous Find
Online gun auctions are my kryptonite. I troll them constantly, looking for obscure treasures. One day, I happened across a Facebook ad for something called the Propstore.
The Propstore has a couple of major auctions each year, each with hundreds of movie-related artifacts. Some are cheap, while others are astronomical. C-3P0’s screen-matched head from Star Wars Episode IV went for $843,750.
Movies have a lot of guns, and the Propstore has moved quite a few. Examples include the AR15 used in I Am Legend ($12,500) as well as the M56 Smart Gun from the James Cameron sci-fi epic Aliens ($150,000). Other Aliens iron included the HK VP70 carried by LT Gorman ($12,000) and the sawed-off Ithaca 12-bore used by CPL Hicks ($60,000). An original M41 Pulse Rifle brought a cool $137,000. Short of mortgaging my home or selling a kidney, all that stuff was way too rich for my blood. I naturally considered both, only to incur my wife’s veto. I’ll never understand women …
Then, one day, something caught my eye. I verified the details and took inventory of the mad money. Then, I made ready for a maximum effort.
Three weeks later, the Smith and Wesson Model 19 revolver wielded by Danny Glover’s curmudgeon cop character Roger Murtaugh in all four Lethal Weapon movies arrived in a cardboard box at the clinic. I dropped the battered old wheelgun in my lap, basking in where it had been and what it had done. Pawing over that high-mileage revolver was like touching Hollywood history.
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