JD,
You wordered that perfectly, thank you.
The replica company did make both. Do they still? It would be interesting if the Glamorous Professional Armorer’s of Hollywood choose weapons without transfer bars. Or failed to replace with replicas containing antiquated actions with updated and safer actions.
That’s industrial lawsuit fodder right there.
I wonder how many armors in Hollywood or production companies are now scrubbing their inventory of single action pistols ensuring that none of those pistols contained in their collections have antique SA technology?
Externally the two replica revolvers look identical the only way to tell the difference is the model numbers and serial numbers. It would be super easy for a gun to go down for mechanical issues and the company to tell someone who is not an armor but a purchasing agent to go get another one then that person goes off without knowing there are two models of the same gun and gets the historically accurate version when they had the safe one before. Lots of ways one could swap one for the other and not know it unless you really looked at the model and serial.
And yes they do still make historically accurate versions I have always wanted a 44-40 in a matching set if never action rifle and single action revolver.