As a matter of fact, almost ALL the guns used in movies and tv back in the 1950s, '60's and '70s were real guns, many of which are now valuable collectibles. Some ended up in private collections.
Sorry to say, many of those collectible guns were modified ("trashed") to fire and cycle with blank ammunition and not live rounds.
A Hollywood specialty dealer (who's name escapes me now) used to supply all the movie set's firearms needs. With the decline of war movies and westerns, they went out of business in the late 1970's and sold off their inventory to gunshops. I examined matching numbered M1896 broomhandled mausers in PERFECT collector's condition with the locking lugs ground off, bore drilled out, tapped, and plugged to cycle blanks. Enuff to make me cry....
There were v.g./excellent mauser rifles of every description with badly rusted bores from firing corrosive ammo and left uncleaned. There were racks and racks full of M1873 Trapdoor Springfields, Krags, M1903 Springfields, M1 carbines, M1 Garands, every model pistol ever made. Most were plugged with steel rods and welded over chambers.
I recently encountered one of these movie lot relics at a gun show, a 7mm Remington Rolling Block rifle. The edges of the breech, block, frame, and hammer had been crudely and heavily GROUND OFF with a bench grinder and then the frame and pins had been welded together!!! Talk about defacing a choice collector's piece.....The seller still had the nerve to ask $340 for it!!!
HTH
John
