While due-diligence is needed when buying collectible model 70s, I wouldn’t hang too much of question mark onto this rifle. Although the .358 Win is a moderately hard to find model 70, it is not a truly rare chambering. As such, I’d give it the benefit of the doubt, unless there is a smoking gun. As I noted above, this stamp looks legit to me. Most of the faked .358s I’ve seen have a poorly modified “0” converted into a “5”. I don’t see any evidence of that on this rifle.
For those on this thread who are just getting introduced to the idea of faked rare model 70s, it really is a big problem. When Winchester went through financial meltdown and was purchased by employees, a great deal of obsolete tooling was sold and entered unknown hands. Because Winchester never seemed to destroy ANYTHING, this represented a lot of production tooling for obsolete rifles ending up on the street. You can still find many of these tools available for sale in firearm auctions. Among the things sold off were the original barrel roll stamps for the pre-64 model 70.
The existence of the barrel roll stamps has enabled counterfeiters to begin producing very sophisticated fakes of any chambering they desire. In addition to the very rare cataloged chamberings (like 7M/M), they also began producing non-cataloged chamberings (you pick the cartridge). The fact Winchester was willing to make a rifle in just about any chambering a customer requested, combined with the facts the serial number production records were destroyed, and that the tooling was floating around on the open market, created the perfect opportunity for counterfeiters to make “rare” rifles with almost no risk of being proven a fraud. One model 70 expert (Vic VanBallenberghe) has surmised there are more fake rare mod 70s in circulation than real ones.
In our shop, we offer authentication services for model 70s and regularly have extremely rare mod 70s sent to us for inspection and authentication. Sometimes fakes are poorly done and the problems are easy to spot. However, we have also seen exquisite fakes which have stamps and finishes which are indistinguishable from factory original, without a forensic examination. We average about 50/50 finding both fakes and genuine rifles. It’s worth noting - the rifles which get sent to us for authentication are not typically cataloged configurations. They are verified model 70 special order chamberings where only a few are known to exist (.30 W.C.F., for example). These are rifles which will generally have a collector value of $10k upwards, and seems to be where the counterfeiters have focused their efforts.
Hope that’s useful for anyone who was trying to wrap their head around why and how faked model 70s is actually a real thing.
