Celebrity Guns: What the Stars Actually Owned

Hollywood stars and American icons left behind more than movies and music. Many were serious gun owners, and the firearms they actually carried, hunted with, or were gifted now sell for staggering sums at auction. Here’s what the legends really owned, the prices their guns command today, and a few myths to clear up along the way.

Elvis Presley: the King’s gold-engraved arsenal

Elvis was a genuine collector. At his death in 1977 he owned roughly 37 handguns plus rifles, and kept a private shooting range at Graceland. His taste ran to ornate, gold- and silver-engraved revolvers, and collectors pay accordingly. A master-engraved Smith & Wesson Model 53, decorated for the 1976 Bicentennial, sold for $199,750 at Rock Island Auction in 2023, more than double its estimate. A gold-engraved Model 19 and an engraved Colt Python each topped $170,000.

The wildest Elvis gun story isn’t about a sale at all. During his famous December 1970 visit to the White House, Elvis brought President Nixon a WWII-era Colt .45 as a gift. The Secret Service intercepted it at the door, and that same day Elvis talked his way into a real federal narcotics badge, now on display at Graceland.

Ernest Hemingway: the writer’s hunting battery

No American writer was more associated with guns and big-game hunting than Hemingway. His collection ran from a beloved Winchester Model 12 pump shotgun to a powerful Westley Richards .577 Nitro Express double rifle built for dangerous African game. That .577 sold for $339,250 at a James D. Julia auction in 2011.

Handled honestly, the saddest chapter is his 1961 death, which he took with one of his own shotguns. For decades it was reported as a Boss, but the definitive book Hemingway’s Guns found no evidence he owned one and concluded it was most likely his W. & C. Scott side-by-side. The gun was deliberately destroyed afterward, so the exact make can never be confirmed.

John Wayne: the Duke’s record-setting six-shooter

Nobody is more linked to the Western than John Wayne, and his signature was a large-loop Winchester Model 1892 carbine that director John Ford shortened for Stagecoach in 1939 so Wayne could spin-cock it one-handed, a move that defined his films for 30 years. The headline sale, though, was a Colt Single Action Army revolver he carried in True Grit and The Cowboys: it sold for $517,500 at Rock Island Auction in October 2021, against an estimate of just $20,000 to $40,000.

One myth to correct: those “Red River D”-branded Colts you’ll see advertised are modern commemoratives, not guns Wayne ever touched.

Steve McQueen and the “Mare’s Leg”

The King of Cool carried one of the most distinctive guns in TV history: the “Mare’s Leg,” a Winchester Model 1892 carbine cut down with an oversized loop lever for the show Wanted: Dead or Alive. A screen-used Mare’s Leg sold for $211,500 at Rock Island Auction in 2025, roughly three to four times its estimate. The original was built as an illegal short-barreled rifle and drew ATF attention until the studio sorted out proper licensing to make more.

Clark Gable’s gift to a doomed wife

In 1940, Clark Gable ordered a custom 20-gauge over/under shotgun, one of only about 14 made by German maker Erich Klebe, as a gift for his wife, actress Carole Lombard. The forearm was inlaid with diamonds reading “1940 / To Carole / Love Clark.” It sold for $57,500 at Rock Island Auction in 2020. The poignant footnote: Lombard died in a plane crash just two years later, in January 1942.

Frank Sinatra and the “Dirty Harry” revolver

Despite all the Rat Pack mystique, only one Sinatra gun is solidly documented: a Smith & Wesson Model 29-2, the same .44 Magnum made famous by Dirty Harry, lavishly engraved with gold-inlaid “FAS” initials. Harrah’s casino presented it to him in March 1976 to celebrate his return to performing. It came up for auction at Rock Island in December 2025.

Charlton Heston’s “cold, dead hands” rifle

One of the most politically iconic firearm images in modern America is Charlton Heston raising a silver-and-gold flintlock long rifle over his head and daring anyone to pry it “from my cold, dead hands” at the 2000 NRA convention. Here’s the detail almost everyone misses: that wasn’t a genuine Revolutionary War antique. It was a presentation replica given to him by the NRA. The most famous old rifle in American politics was, in fact, a plated reproduction.

Audie Murphy: the war hero behind the movie star

Before he was a Western movie star, Audie Murphy was the most decorated American soldier of World War II. On January 26, 1945, near Holtzwihr, France, he climbed atop a burning tank destroyer and worked its .50-caliber M2 Browning machine gun for nearly an hour, wounded, holding off German tanks and infantry, an action that earned the Medal of Honor. One of his personal Colt Single Action Army revolvers sold for $90,675 in 2024. Murphy also lived openly with severe combat trauma and became an early public voice for treating PTSD in veterans.

The all-time record: a $6 million revolver

For perspective on what historical provenance can do to a price, consider the world record. The most expensive firearm ever sold at auction is the Colt revolver that Sheriff Pat Garrett used to kill Billy the Kid in 1881. It sold at Bonhams in 2021 for $6,030,313. Note the careful wording: it’s the gun that killed Billy the Kid, owned by the lawman, not by the outlaw. There’s no verified blockbuster price for a gun Billy himself owned.

For more on the eye-watering end of the market, see the most expensive guns ever sold, plus the biggest guns ever built.

Keep exploring Cool Guns

• The longest confirmed sniper kills in history
• The most famous gunfights in history
• The stories behind gun names and nicknames
• Video game guns vs. real life