A federal regulation says any firearm made 50 years ago is a curio or relic. Colorado wrote that regulation directly into its own gun laws — and it is the reason the three-day waiting period does not apply to your grandfather’s Garand.
“Curio or relic” is not a nickname collectors gave themselves. It is a defined term in federal regulation, and the definition contains a clock: fifty years. A firearm that crosses that line becomes a C&R automatically, whether or not anyone at ATF ever writes it down.
That matters in Colorado for a specific and useful reason. When the legislature wrote the three-day waiting period, it did not invent its own definition of an old gun. It pointed straight at the federal regulation — and exempted everything inside it.
Colorado’s waiting period does not apply to the sale of a curio or relic. The statute says so in one sentence.
This is the whole definition, quoted exactly. Everything on this page descends from it.
“Firearms which are of special interest to collectors by reason of some quality other than is associated with firearms intended for sporting use or as offensive or defensive weapons. To be recognized as curios or relics, firearms must fall within one of the following categories:
(a) Firearms which were manufactured at least 50 years prior to the current date, but not including replicas thereof;
(b) Firearms which are certified by the curator of a municipal, State, or Federal museum which exhibits firearms to be curios or relics of museum interest; and
(c) Any other firearms which derive a substantial part of their monetary value from the fact that they are novel, rare, bizarre, or because of their association with some historical figure, period, or event…”
27 CFR § 478.11 (definition of “Curios or relics”). Category (c) is quoted in part; the full text continues with how such value may be proven.
A firearm manufactured on or before this date is 50 years old and meets § 478.11(a). The line moves forward every single day — which is why the C&R category keeps growing without anyone passing a law.
The most common misunderstanding is that a gun must appear on ATF’s published list to be a C&R. It does not. Here is ATF, in its own words, in two places.
“Firearms automatically attain C&R status when they are 50 years old. Any firearm that is at least 50 years old, and in its original configuration, would qualify as a C&R firearm. It is not necessary for such firearms to be listed in ATF’s C&R list. Therefore, ATF does not generally list firearms in the C&R publication by virtue of their age.”
“Please note that firearms regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA) may be classified as C&R items, but still may be subject to the provisions of the NFA.”
ATF, “Curios & Relics,” under “How to obtain C&R classification.”
“In the case of firearms that are more than 50 years old, ATF has determined that a collector need not request a classification for such weapons. Firearms 50 years or older automatically qualify as curios or relics.”
ATF E-Publication 5320.8, National Firearms Act Handbook (rev. April 2009), § 10.1.2, at 67.
These two get conflated constantly, and the difference is enormous. One leaves federal gun law behind entirely; the other does not.
ATF’s own list encodes the split: Sections II and III are C&R firearms “still subject to the provisions of 18 U.S.C. Chapter 44, the Gun Control Act of 1968,” while Section IIIA is pre-1899 antiques “not subject to” it.
Colorado did not write its own definition of an old firearm. In two separate statutes it pointed at the federal regulation by citation — which means the 50-year rule above is doing the work in Colorado law.
“THIS SECTION DOES NOT APPLY TO: (a) THE SALE OF AN ANTIQUE FIREARM, AS DEFINED IN 18 U.S.C. SEC. 921 (a)(16), AS AMENDED, OR A CURIO OR RELIC, AS DEFINED IN 27 CFR 478.11, AS AMENDED…”
C.R.S. § 18-12-115(2)(a), enacted by HB23-1219, effective October 1, 2023. The statute is printed in small capitals in the enrolled act because it was new language.
That is the answer, and it is unusually clean. The waiting period in § 18-12-115(1) bars a seller from delivering a firearm until the later of three days after a background check is initiated or approval comes back from CBI. Subsection (2)(a) removes curios and relics from that section entirely. Not a shortened wait — the section “does not apply.”
The state borrowed the federal clock.
Fifty years old under 27 CFR 478.11, and Colorado’s three-day wait never attaches.
And it is not the only place. When Colorado passed SB25-003 — the permit-to-purchase regime for “specified semiautomatic firearms” — it used the same device.
“‘SPECIFIED SEMIAUTOMATIC FIREARM’ DOES NOT INCLUDE:”
“(G) AN ANTIQUE FIREARM, AS DEFINED IN 18 U.S.C. SEC. 921 (a)(16), OR A CURIO OR RELIC, AS DEFINED IN 27 CFR 478.11.”
C.R.S. § 18-12-116(1)(d)(II)(G), enacted by SB25-003, operative August 1, 2026.
Two guns sit at the center of this question in Colorado. Both are C&R; one of them Colorado also named by hand.
Explicitly listed by ATF. ATF P 5300.11, Section II, lists:
“U.S. Rifle, cal. .30, M1, original issue only, produced prior to 1958.”
Sniper variants (M1C, M1D, and the USMC MC-1952) carry their own entries, and the early “gas trap” Garand — manufactured from 1936 until early 1940, with no gas port drilled into the barrel — is listed separately.
And it clears the 50-year rule regardless. Garand production ran from the late 1930s through 1957 across all four makers. Every Garand ever built predates August 30, 1976, so every one satisfies § 478.11(a) independent of any list.
Under SB25-003 it was never in scope to begin with. A Garand feeds from a fixed eight-round en-bloc clip, not a detachable magazine, so it never met the definition in § 18-12-116(1)(d)(I)(A). It is separately excluded under (1)(d)(II)(C) as a firearm with a permanently fixed magazine that cannot accept more than fifteen rounds — and again under (G) as a curio or relic. Three independent grounds.
Colorado named it directly. SB25-003’s exclusion at § 18-12-116(1)(d)(II)(E) lists specific models that are not “specified semiautomatic firearms” as configured on the effective date. “M1 CARBINE” appears on that list by name — alongside the Gewehr 43, SVT 40, MAS49, FN49, M1941 Johnson, AG42 Ljungman, and the RSC M1917. The legislature carved out the WWII semi-autos explicitly.
On ATF’s list, only one variant is named: “U.S. Carbine, cal. .30, M1, manufactured by Irwin Pedersen.” Inland, Winchester, IBM, Underwood, Rock-Ola and the rest are not individually listed — and do not need to be. Wartime carbine production ran 1942–1945, so every one is over 50 years old and qualifies by age, and by ATF’s blanket entry for “all original military bolt action and semiautomatic rifles mfd. between 1899 and 1946.”
Post-war commercial carbines are different. Plainfield, Universal, Iver Johnson and similar civilian-made carbines were never military issue. One made after August 1976 is not a C&R by age, and being “an M1 Carbine” in the everyday sense does not make it one.
The select-fire M2 Carbine is on ATF’s C&R list — in Section IV, which ATF titles: “NFA firearms classified as curios or relics, still subject to the provisions of 26 U.S.C. Chapter 53, the National Firearms Act, and 18 U.S.C. Chapter 44.”
“NFA firearms may be classified as curios or relics… NFA firearms classified as curios or relics are still subject to the provisions of the NFA.” — ATF NFA Handbook § 10.1.3
It remains a registered machine gun, subject to transfer on a Form 4 with the tax, and it is transfer-prohibited to civilians unless lawfully registered before May 19, 1986. Installing M2 select-fire parts in a semi-automatic M1 Carbine creates an unregistered machine gun — a federal felony. C&R status has nothing to do with any of that.
The same pattern covers the rest of the rack. The M1903 Springfield is listed by name (“all cal.’s, all variations” for Springfield Armory and Rock Island Arsenal production). The Mosin-Nagant is listed as “Model 1891… all models and all variations, mfd. after 1898” — a nice illustration of the antique line drawn inside a single entry, since a pre-1899 Mosin is an antique, not a C&R. The M1917 Enfield, the K98k, and the Lee-Enfield No. 4 are not listed by those names at all, and do not need to be: all are wartime military rifles well over 50 years old, and ATF’s blanket entry for original military rifles made between 1899 and 1946 reaches them.
Do not generalize “the SKS is a C&R.” The Soviet SKS is listed with no date qualifier, and Soviet production ran roughly 1949–1955. Albanian, Romanian, and Yugoslav variants have their own entries. But the Chinese Type 56 is not on ATF’s list at all — so for a Chinese SKS, age is the only route, and it must have been made on or before August 30, 1976. Chinese production began in 1956 and ran for decades; the large commercial import wave of the late 1980s and early 1990s is not C&R. That is the version most American owners actually have.
ATF’s stated test is narrow: “ATF has recognized only complete, assembled firearms as curios or relics. ATF’s classification of surplus military firearms as curios or relics has extended only to those firearms in their original military configuration. Frames or receivers of curios or relics are not generally recognized as curios or relics.” Several list entries repeat the condition — the Garand entries say “original issue only.” What ATF has not published is any parts-count rule or bright line for arsenal-rebuilt rifles, which is the ordinary condition of nearly every surviving Garand. We are not going to invent one. If it matters to your situation, the answer is a written classification request to ATF’s Firearms and Ammunition Technology Division under 27 CFR § 478.26 — and a sporterized or commercially-receivered rifle is a genuinely different question from a GI rebuild.
This is the part that gets people in trouble. The Colorado exemptions above are real and narrow. Here is everything they are not.
If you collect C&R firearms, the Type 03 Collector of Curios and Relics license exists for one purpose: to let you acquire C&R firearms across state lines without going through a dealer at the far end. ATF is blunt about the scope — “The sole intent and purpose of the collector’s license is to enable a firearms collector to obtain curio or relic firearms from outside his or her State of residence.”
It costs $30 for three years (27 CFR §§ 478.42(d), 478.49), with no renewal discount, and it is applied for on ATF Form 7/7CR. No photograph or fingerprint card is required for a Type 03 alone. In exchange you keep a bound acquisition and disposition record — acquisitions logged by the close of the next business day, dispositions within seven days (27 CFR § 478.125(f)).
What it is not: a dealer’s license. ATF, in its own capitals: “A LICENSED COLLECTOR IS NOT AUTHORIZED TO ENGAGE IN BUSINESS AS A DEALER IN ANY FIREARMS, INCLUDING CURIOS OR RELICS.” And a licensed collector “has the same status under the Gun Control Act as a nonlicensee except for transactions in curio or relic firearms.”
One more thing worth quoting in full, because the two halves belong together: licensed collectors are not required to execute a Form 4473 for C&R transactions — “However, it is unlawful for any person to transfer a firearm to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person is a felon or is within any other category of person prohibited from receiving or possessing firearms.”
Because it is the one place Colorado law got the principle right. The legislature looked at a rifle built in 1943, recognized that a waiting period aimed at impulsive violence has nothing to say about a collector’s Garand, and wrote the exclusion into the statute. Same with SB25-003 — the M1 Carbine is named, in the law, as outside the ban.
Those carve-outs are an admission. They concede that these statutes are not calibrated to danger; they are calibrated to categories, and the categories needed hand-cut exceptions to avoid absurd results. The question this site keeps asking is why the same reasoning stops at 1976.
A rifle does not become safe because it turned fifty.
It was always the same rifle. The law simply stopped pretending otherwise.
The exclusions on this page are narrow, specific, and worth understanding exactly. Read the regulation and the statutes yourself — every one is linked above.
The author of this site is not an attorney and does not practice law. Nothing published here is legal advice, no part of it is offered as legal advice, and reading it creates no attorney-client relationship with anyone. This is Second Amendment advocacy and general-interest commentary written by a private citizen, and it includes opinion.
Full terms: Legal Notice & Terms of Use → Page last reviewed August 30, 2026. The law may have changed since.