My carry gun for a few days... Post a few Walthers PPK’s in honor of the character that kept this little gun around.
Very nice. I will agree those movies sold a lot of PPK’S. People who say they would never buy a gun because they saw it in a movie are often kidding themselves. Especially when it comes to westerns.
25 years ago, I was an electrician working near Philadelphia. We had a customer who wanted 4 dimmers and lights placed in his ceiling above his poker table in his recreation room. Sure, no problem. We want down into his rec room and it was James Bond themed. Totally and obsessively. His house had a basement garage which he had walled off the outside door and installed a large glass window to look out over it from the rec room. What was he looking at? THE Aston Martin FROM THE MOVIES. I sat in it and played with the machine gun/smoke screen/oil slick (and whatever else there was) switches. None of them worked of course. When I finally got to work pulling wire for the job, I had to go into a closet and access a joist bay. I was on the ladder with my back to the shelf when I turned around and saw a little maroon box. Naturally, since I was an inquisitive lad, I opened it. There was no harm in looking. It was one of the guns from the movie with provenance paperwork. I didn't do an op check on it. I just looked for a minute and went back to my business. About 10 years ago, it went to auction and sold for 4.6 million. https://www.rbr.com/jerry-lees-aston-martin-db5-fetches-4-6-million/
Here's a Bond gun you don't see every day. Walther LP 53 as seen in the FRWL movie posters. PS This is the one that started my collection. I gave $20 for it in the early 70s.
In Jackie Stewart's autobiography, he mentions that Sean Connery never actually fired a gun until he participated in the Rolex Celebrity Challenge at Gleneagles in 1986, shooting clay birds.
The BodyGuard for Princess Margaret, a retired London Police Officer, carried a PPK in .380, carried it for years, never unloaded a magazine, an attempt on her Royal Highness' life, it fired the first round (He missed) then the mag was sized. A young Boxer running bye stepped in, and laid the assassin to be, out! That's from memory, hope I am right.
The LP in LP 53 stands for Luft Pistole or air pistol. It's a 177 single shot and the round knob is where the spring and piston reside. They didn't have a PPK at the photo shoot and the photographer had an LP 53 in the studio. That pistol sold for 400K 10 years ago.
This is one I owned a while ago. It was a dang near mint condition PPK RZM, a pistol given to Nazi party members. Fairly rare item. IMG_2633 by scarfam, on Flickr IMG_2626 by scarfam, on Flickr
Lifting a dry vodka martini, shaken, not stirred, in memory. Here are my PPK's, and a P5 (Connery as Bond used a P5 in his final Bond film, the non-canonical Never Say Never Again).
I was wondering what the gun was in the FRWL poster. Saw a magazine on the rack at grocery store today with Sean Connery's picture holding a pistol. Looked a lot like my Marksman CO2 pistol, but with funky rear sight.
