That’s not just any ordinary Spaghetti Repro

The image above is of an Italian-made reproduction .44-caliber Colt 1851 Navy percussion revolver imported to the U.S. by Val Forgett’s Navy Arms in the 1970s.

Man I miss the old Navy Arms….

While these guns aren’t rare by any stretch and don’t cost a lot of cash– heck, original Civil War-era Colt Navy revolvers themselves only go for about $2K these days at auction, the above Italian repro just brought $17,400 at a Milestone Auction in Ohio last month.

You see, it was one of a pair of replica guns used by Clint Eastwood in the 1976 film The Outlaw, Josey Wales, and was accompanied by two signed certificates from Paramount Studios.

The movie, adapted from Forrest Carter’s western novel, was one of Eastwood’s cowboy stories actually shot in the U.S., filmed across Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, and California in DeLuxe Color and Panavision, and was directed by Eastwood.

A commercial success that brought over 10 times its filming budget despite the hero being a Missouri Bushwacker with a backstory that included “Bloody Bill” Anderson, in 1996, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for being deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

One of the certificates identified the gun by serial number and attested to its having been used by Eastwood in his starring role in the classic Western. The gun, marked 1526 and Paramount on the butt, was found in 2000 storage by the studio and logged to the film.

It was then sold at a charity auction while its companion gun is now part of the Smithsonian collection in Washington, DC.

Milestone had estimated the gun would bring $5,000-$10,000. I guess they underestimated the draw of Josey Wales.

One comment

  • This repo maybe have been used in the movie by DIFFERENT CHARACTERS they weren’t used by Clint the three he used were repo colt 1847 walkers one In a pommel holster Draped over the saddle horn and a pair in hip holster and a colt 1849 pocket revolver in a shoulder holster and a colt 1860 army and some times it’s a colt 1861 navy (which looks a colt 1860 army oops) stuck in gun belt in front and the first gun is found in the ashes of his family house badly burned converted colt 1860 army with a cut down barrel and sometimes it to is draped over the saddle horn and a Remington 1858 new army he got after the line to hell with them fellows Buzzard gotta eat and same as the worm it also is sometimes draped over the saddle horn and long raged scoped sharps rifle

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.