There wa also, about 10 years ago, an "outing" opf a con artist who had been making replicas and going to extreme lengths to age them, like burying them in the ground for months, letting them sit in the sun for months, this fellow went as far as to put a used tootsie roll pop inside one and leave it long enough to leave a mark to relate to the story of Leonard dstoring his inside while shooting.
Apparently, this fellow had his wife and someone else helping him for years and finally one of them blew the lid on it.
It was a quiet business, selling one or two a year for exorbitant prices as authentic and they sold more than ever existed in the first place. The extreme secrecy had kept this under wraps until it was "out" and people started to compare notes.
Many props that people have had for 20 years turned out to be some of his replicas. Obviously the people who had been taken were embarrassed and I don't know what happened (if they sued, or got a rope.)
I do know that this served to push the originals even further underground though.
John Dwyer is probably the best one to ask about how many, though last time I asked him, he didn't recall. I have heard so many stories about people who "had one" and played with it as a kid from their uncle/father/grandfather/friend-of-the-family who "worked on the show and grabbed one as a souvenir when the show was cancelled."
Of course, they were long since destroyed and thrown out, in these stories, but who knows? It is entirely conceivable that several of these props ended up being given to kids and destroyed.
Wah Chang and Matt Jefferies also had ideas on where some of them were and how many but I never heard definitive numbers from either of them.
Maybe if this thread keep sgoing, we'll learn something!
so, BUMP.
