Im showing my age here....(born in 1941)....however i remember when I was a small boy.....seeing and hearing some of the WW2 Vets talking about having their "war souvenir pistols"...CHROMED....it seemed to be a popular thing to do back in the early 50s.....especially with .45 Automatics..........my youngest sons father in law has a Beautiful WW2 .45 automatic.....but alas...it was "chromed".....so as I said....back in the day.....a lot of the Vets apparently thought it was "the thing to do"....just my $0.02 worth of old memory