50-100 years is no time at all in the firearms biz. Heck, the venerable 1911 is 102 years old, and the M1 Garand is 75. Most people consider those relatively serviceable and shootable today.
The other thing to consider, is that firearms of yore were substantially more expensive than the firearms of today (in constant dollars), and the average man's wages were less. While there were folks around that had sizable numbers of guns, the larger private collections (I'm talking 100+ guns) that are so commonplace today did not exist to the extend they do in today's society.