Thanks for the education. The trouble for me is, I won't be able to remember all those finer points without the two pictures side by side for comparison. I suppose I could make prints and carry them around with me, etc.

This makes the whole idea of what is a "correct" M1icon Rifle all the more problematic. It's a shame that a select few sharp individuals get greedy and spoil some of the fun. By "sharp" I mean that in the old sense, as in "sharp business practices" which formerly were thought to be unethical. In this matter, they've got beyond unethical.

In my own case, I have five M1 Rifles, and only one would rate being correct and since it is a post-Korean war piece, the monetary impetus to fake it's markings are considerably less. The others, while nice enough, have issues that preclude them from being "correct."

It's a shame that a guy has to have bought a rifle 20 years ago for it to "probably be good." This kind of fakery and worse happened with collectible Germanicon stuff a long time ago. It makes me wary of all of it, and I'm glad that I buy stuff that isn't "high end" as it is less apt to have problems with fakery.

Since some of the culprits are known, it's a shame that they cannot be unmasked. But then again, with the fake stamps being distributed freely now, there must be a great many culprits around. One of the (good, in my opinion) guys who does M1 work for pay does cartouching, but he brands the stocks in the barrel channel. Still, some of those might change hands without the stock being taken down.