Here is some info I dug up on this import gun.
IIn the late 1950s, Val Forgett, the founder of Navy
Arms, and Italian gunmaker Aldo Uberti selected the
Colt 1851 Navy as the first percussion era revolver to be
reproduced. And what a legendary gun they had chosen.
This was the celebrated six-shooter carried by James
Butler Hickok and the sidearm used extensively Union
and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. The Colt
Navy was instantly recognizable and immediately popular
as the first modern black powder Colt style replica.
Thus, after a dozen years and thousands of copies, the
1851 Navy finally came to the attention of the company
that had originally manufactured it, Colt.
By 1971, Navy Arms Company had become the leading
importer of Italian made Colt-style black powder
revolvers, as well as other historic black powder arms. Val
Forgett had virtually created the American black powder
industry. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he had personally
underwritten the costs of design and development
for several models, along with author and historian
William B. Edwards. A founder of Guns magazine
and a principal in the Centennial Arms Company,
Edwards was another of the early importers of Civil War
replicas and an instrumental link between Forgett and
Italian gunmakers Vittorio Gregorelli, Aldo Uberti, and
Luciano Amadi, the Italian black powder industry's version
of "The Three Tenors." This, of course, all took
place long before Colt's became involved in manufacturing
reproductions of their own 19th century designs.
Some great info here in pdf format![url]
https://store.bluebookinc.com/Info/PDF/POWDER/MBPHistoryOfColtBlack.pdf[/url]
An orginal box
