I 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.
blade-runner-gunw

Photo courtesy: Profiles In History Auction House

1 COMMENT

  1. Bladerunner is one of the most influential sci-fi movies ever made. (It’s pretty fun to watch too. (The magazine article about it was fun as well.) ) So the prop is actually a pretty important peice of cinema history.

    But $270,000 worth of history!!!???

    Well, so maybe the economy is finally on the upturn . . .

  2. Well since trillion is the new million I shouldn’t be surprised but I am!

    And thanks for the link, there’s a great article about shot placement in that issue with a shoutout to you even 🙂

    Glad I chose LFI for my training!

  3. Good grief. It looked much better when you only caught brief glimpses of it in the atmospheric twilight gloom. In the full light of day, that’s about a three-bagger.

  4. If that gun is what the future of firearms will look like, I’ll be hitting up the pawn shops for old school weapons. That thing was ugly in the movie and ugly still today. It even looks rediculous. I think the prop guys figured the movie would bomb so they played a joke on them and put that thing together.

  5. I could have bought a lot of real guns and ammo for that kind of money. and had a lot more fun at the range. Talk about missguided priorities.

  7. Why? Because he can. More power to the buyer.

    Perhaps he’ll wake up in the morning and chew his arm off. Still, I’m not going to give the stupid SOB too much crap for spending his money as he sees fit.

  8. Most people I know would love to have $270,000 to spend on useful things. Movie fantasy objects are neither useful, nor in this case, very appealing.

  9. Oh come on, let this guy spend his money how he chooses. He is not the first and will certainly not be the last to blow a bundle of cash on a prop from a movie.

    Besides, if you’re going to drop a load of cash on a movie prop it might as well be from a movie as great as Blade Runner.

  10. Blade Runner is an iconic movie. The purchase was probably driven by a combination of investment opportunity and nostalgia. Looks and practicality have nothing to do with it.

  12. Probably bought by a sci-fi geek, possibly a gun nut of some sort as well. Gun nuts are usually griping about how negatively guns are portrayed in Hollywood. Why, when a prop gun from a movie with a HUGE cult following goes for a huge chunk of change, do you dump all over both the gun and the person who bought it?

    Y’all are just about the most confused group of people I’ve come across on any gun-related site.

  13. BTW, the same thing happens in the world of fountain pens, knives and guitars. And pretty much anything else that’s both functional and collectible. I guarantee you that any of you that have a large amount of money to throw at a “fun” purchase of some sort have, or will at some point, buy something that will make others scratch their heads. And then you’ll be the butt of the joke.