1903a3 smith

[Rick the Librarian]

The thing is, I would not understand why anyone would fake a OG (not OC) stamp - they just ain't that rare and don't really enhance the value of a rifle, unless the whole stock is faked.

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[sakorick]

The thing is, I would not understand why anyone would fake a OG (not OC) stamp - they just ain't that rare and don't really enhance the value of a rifle, unless the whole stock is faked.

I can't answer that. All I know is without a hands on inspection, I would consider the boxed FJA stamp and the OC cartouche as fake. For starters, the only OC cartouche where the belt does not lay on top of the canons is on the Rock-ola carbine stamp which the canons and belt crisscross. If you look carefully at the cartouche in question, not only is it up side down but the canon that crosses from 2 o'clock to 8 o'clock is very odd in that it crosses over the the top of the belt at the 8 o'clock position. I know of no other OC cartouche that does this. The boxed FJA also looks incorrect. Note the space between the F and the JA. I did not see an OG stamp on the very poor pictures. Why would anyone try to embellish any rifle is beyond me......but they are doing it every day and ruining our hobby just to make a common example seem rare or perfect. These people will stop at nothing to make a few hundred dollars. We are now finding hundreds of fake parts on carbines.....especially flip sights that are worth upwards of 500 dollars each.

The K98 Mauser community has been going through this for at least 10 years now....fake forced matched SN's, fake SS marks and skulls. I tend to shy away from any sale of rare collectible private collection stories where the seller show about 4 or 5 terrible pictures, and this one, IMHO, stinks. Regards, Rick.