GUN AUCTION MADNESS CONTINUES
Monday, August 3rd, 2009I dunno whether “it’s something in the water” or something in the Kool-Aid, but yet another gun auction has ended with an insane amount of money changing hands.
Remember the 1982 movie “Blade Runner” with Harrison Ford? It’s set ten years from now in the future, the year 2019, and Ford is an LAPD detective whose assignment is chasing down “replicants,” humanoids with super strength and fantastic agility who turn ugly and murder real people.
Prop-makers out-did themselves with the futuristic weapon they created for him. They took an inexpensive Charter Arms Bulldog, a five-shot .44 Special revolver designed for concealed carry, and enveloped it in the receiver of a Steyr-Mannlicher SL .222 Remington caliber sporting rifle with a flat “butter-knife” bolt handle. The double set triggers of the rifle replaced the normal trigger group of the Charter .44. A brown plastic grip with finger grooves was fashioned by the propmasters, and capped off at the bottom with an aluminum butt-plate. An LED module went under the barrel, which did nothing but flicker red and green and look, well, “futuristic.”
One commentator, Kevin McPherson, said it resembled a revolver with a smog control device. You can find his hilarious send-up of the whole thing, titled “Blade Runner 101,” on line in the September/October 2008 edition of American Cop magazine. I thought it was a wonderful read.
Well, old friend Jim Shults passes along the word that this prop gun was just auctioned off for $258,750. That price does not include buyer commission, so the estimated total due when the auctioneer’s hammer came down is in the range of $270,000.
Was it Richard Pryor or Robin Williams who said, “Cocaine is nature’s way of telling you that you have too much money”? This item could fit that category, too.
Scroll down a bit lower on this blog, and you’ll find that the mansion of the great gun designer John Browning is up for sale in Ogden, Utah. It would make one heck of a bed-and-breakfast catering to gun fanciers. Perhaps whomever buys that piece of genuine American history can get together with the understandably anonymous individual who paid $270K for the “Blade Runner” prop, and put that “gun” prominently on display.
Then they can advertise their new B&B as “the haunted mansion.”
‘Cause I’m betting that guests will be able to hear the ghost of John M. Browning retching.
Photo courtesy: Profiles In History Auction House
