I was talking to a friend in Alaska about how whenever a pre 64 7mm comes up for auction, if it's a standard grade it's virtually mint OR it's a carbine. His reasoning for this was that most of them are fake. He may be correct.
Sometimes a little normal use wear can be your friend. Especially when the rifle has just enough wear in the right places to indicate that it was carried and potentially hunted with some. It's what I like to call a "good honest gun".
There's a 358 on guns international now that is sale pending, the seller wanted $4650 for the gun. The metal on the gun is virtually flawless but there's a good bit of finish loss on the stock, hmmmm.
There was another that sold a week after I got Dad's by the same seller (as a consignment), a gun that was listed as a result of my purchase, albeit not nearly as nice as mine but way more expensive. This particular one had an aftermarket jeweled bolt and a mauser style trigger guard with the button. It also had significant amount of compression marks and scratches throughout the wood. Even so, someone paid $4500 for it. Makes me feel good about the deal I got on mine
There's a 358 on gunbroker now which is likely original. It has had the stock cut to accommodate a receiver site, the listing speaks of provenance so I guess you could get the guy to sign an affidavit lol. Pictures aren't so great but appears to be a nice rifle. Also, per his last list Randy Shuman had a 358.
I concur with what Sheister has said. There are very sophisticated counterfeit model 70s out there which require a forensic approach to determine they are not original - you cannot detect they are a fake by a close visual, even magnified examination.
The .358 mentioned in the OP is a feeble attempt at fakery which would not fool any serious collector. However, the existence of very good fakes in some extremely rare chamberings has made most collectors very wary of paying huge sums of money for what appears to be a mint rifle in a rare chambering. Many collectors are protecting themselves by only buying rifles with provable provenance, which is a very troubling side-effect of people counterfeiting rifles. Collectors who have perfectly legit and rare guns are at risk of seeing potential buyers shy away from those rifles if the owner cannot prove they are authentic.
I know of some collectors who have started cataloging every serial number they can find and noting the chambering and other details about the rifle. This seems like a daunting task when there are 700,000 pre-64 model 70s out there, but this effort has already resulted in identifying rare rifles which have been faked. When a mint .270 sells on RIA for $1,700 in 2008, then the same serial number reappears in 2016 on J.D. Julia as a 250-3000 Savage with an estimated sale price of $14,000, they know not to buy it and they also sound the alarm to other collectors about the clearly faked rifle. Often, the person selling it has no idea it is a fake. They bought it several years before with no clue there was a problem. I've seen careful collectors detect faked rifles by tracking serial numbers on two different occasions. Occasionally there has been talk from WACA members about creating an online database for logging and cross-referencing model 70 serial numbers. In the absence of Winchester factory records on the model 70, such a database would be a huge help in putting an end to the counterfeit rifle business.
I'll get off my soap box now.
Cheers,
Justin
PS: I hope some day my son buys me a .358
