Replicas, "Si” Fakes "No”

It is true that this argument applied to currency is the motive behind the suppression of counterfeiting. Issuing additional paper money tends to debase the original issue in value. Whether issuing, say, 6,500 fluted-cylinder Army Colts by copies in this century debases the value of the genuine pistol made in 1860

In Brescian shop of Vittorio Gregorelli fine Italian hands put together copies of Colt Navy revolvers. Workman standing takes whisker of metal off brass “Reb” backstrap while man with file shapes curve of 1851 barrel frame.

if unwary or too eager. Whether the wholesale manufacture of replicas of classic firearms encourages this possibility is the current debate. My own choice on the matter is, “No.” I back it up by my own activities in founding and in engaging in the current business of making old-time Civil War guns for those high-priced vacant gaps in many a collection, and for the modern shooter who wants to try out the old guns. Of this business it cannot be claimed nostalgically that “They don’t make them like they used to,” for we do!
My first notion of replica manufacturing occurred in 1947 when from Civil War surplus parts I was able to build up a brand new Colt Ml851 Navy revolver. I used the gun for shooting, even filed its bright blued barrel to fit a crosswise BAR sight blade for better aiming at short ranges. Texas collector Jimmy Voulgaris badgered me to sell him the gun, for he sought to mount the parts again on a display board to show the ingredients of the original Colts in new condition. At the time I had some hazy notion, incapable of fulfillment, that it would be fun to make the Navy Colt again. I liked the looks of the gun and it certainly was famous enough. Briefly employed by Colt’s, I even conjectured if the old Hartford firm would get up steam on such a project; but other, more pressing matters of making a living intervened. Later, oddly, Colt’s was to use my own make copy of one of their classics as a model from which they constructed a current % scale replica of their own gun. But this gets too confusing too soon.
The idea and the parts-Navy stuck with me. After getting started in the gun writing game I reverted to the project casually. In 1956 Val Forgett, who was then about to found the machine gun business known as “Ma Hunter,” gun importer Sam Cummings, then vice president, later president of Interarmco, and I were talking about the gun business at the latter’s warehouse in Alexandria. I mentioned to Sam the prospect of having the Navy Colt manufactured. Sam replied that he had asked Erma Werke (Munich, Germany) for costs but that it would be $20 each and then 5,000 would have to be ordered. The price was prohibitive; but in a couple of years Colt prices so skyrocketed that the price no longer seemed excessive. It was in the Albergo Vittoria in Brescia, gunmaking city of Italy, in October of 1957, that Forgett, an Italian businessman, and I decided to resurrect the Navy Colt.