Guys, I want to be careful to not cast doubt on that particular GunBroker rifle. The detectable differences between a legit rifle and a good fake are too subtle to be seen in photos. In fact, they are often too subtle to be seen with the naked eye in person. The ways we can authenticate a rifle are not things we make public (we really don’t want the counterfeiters to know what we’re looking for), but they are definitely not things you can evaluate in a low resolution photo online.

As for the alignment of the 5 in the 358 stamp, this doesn’t concern me. The caliber stamp was not a part of the master roll stamp engraving, but we’re an added part of the stamp, coming in the form of a stacked set of numbers and letters. Some slight misalignment is not a smoking gun of it being incorrect.