Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Winchester Collectors 358 p64 fw on GB

Looks to be in decent shape. No affiliation but thought it might be of interest to some - seems to be reasonable $ from what I can glean from past auctions. Thought about it a bit and decided I don’t need anymore dust collectors, although I’ll probably be pissed at myself tomorrow.

https://www.gunbroker.com/item/792659226

Looks legit. We’ve seen a number of .358s which are .308 rifles, rebored with a cleverly reworked barrel stamp, changing a ‘0’ into a ‘5’. The barrel stamp photo is not super clear in the listing, but clear enough to make me think it’s a real .358. Not a bad price, assuming it’s genuine!

I don't think that 5 looks right.

I’d pass, especially considering the sellers Inspection/Return Policy....

Hit your ctrl and + button and blow it up.

I agree with you Fireball2

I am no expert. Why would featherweight .358 have a different rear sight than any other featherweight I have seen? All I have seen have a folding rear sight.

Thanks

Easy too see the area of the barrel around '358' has been over polished, someone should arrange a ftf cash buy and punch that lying fraud in the teeth!

Low comb stocked guns used the Winchester 22G rear sight until 1953 and Winchester 22K rear sight until 1957 (both were leaf spring sights). The Marble No. 69 and Lyman No. 16B (both folding leaf rear sights) were used with the Monte Carlo comb stocked guns.

Have always had a thing for the classic lines of the low comb stocked guns....

Not saying it isn't, or couldn't be, a fraud but the marking appear to match up well with 2 others. The top of the 5 slightly lower than the 3 & 8. Over polishing is not evident in a different view. Picture quality and lighting make a big difference.

Agreed the "5" looks suspect, seemingly a different size and position than the 3 and the 8. I would definately not be a bidder on that rifle.

Are there no factory records for any pre '64 model 70's? Cody Firearms museum has records for 21s and many old levers why not Model 70s?

Polishing Room Records (indicating the date a particular firearm was serialized) exist for a limited serial # range of early pre64 Model 70’s. There are no known records indicating individual Model 70 rifle caliber and configuration. Hoppers full of Model 70 records (as well as other Winchester models) were destroyed (burned) in the 1950’s to free up room and fuel the factories furnaces....

Gunswizard, Gunner500 (and all): I have a pair of pre-64 Winchester Model 70 Featherweights in caliber 358 Winchester and they both have the slightly "shorter" 5 there in between the 3 and the 8!
Exactly as shown in the G.B. ad.
I would refer you doubting Thomas's to page 116 of Roger C. Rules classic reference book "The Rifleman's Rifle" (Alliance Books 1982).
The photo there on page 116, in the definitive work on pre-64 Model 70's, shows EXACTLY the same "5" (a few thousandths shorter!) as in the G.B. ad and as on my Rifles and those depicted in this thread.
I have owned my 358 Rifles since long before anyone would (could afford!) to go through the extensive process of "re-boring" then re-stamping/engraving a 308 Winchester barrel to 358 Winchester - so I am 100% certain they are originals.
Plus my Rifles are in the correct serial number range for the factory original 358 Winchester Featherweights. In my 50+ years of collecting pre-64 Model 70's I have seen 3 (three) attempted "forgeries" of 358 Featherweights and believe me when I say they were extremely easy to discern as fraudulent/faked/forgeries!
My contention is the G.B. Rifle is original.
Long live the Riflemans Rifle
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Alright then, I should have said a punch in the teeth if it's found to be a forgery, that said, where in hells half acre are all the mysterious RARE Winchesters coming from all of a sudden, as a whole, I smell enough bullshit to keep my tomatoes fertilized till im dead.

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.

^^^ Great educational post pre64win! I know you know your stuff. That said, if I read Rule correctly, all .358 are Featherweights and only about 2000 were made. In addition, that chambering had some ignition and extraction issues due to the relatively small shoulder. Winchester "recalled" and replaced with whatever chambering the customer wanted. As such, that 2000 number may be high.

I guess different people have definitions of "moderately hard to find", "rare", and "truly rare", but I must say I wonder what your definitions are. Absolutely no disrespect intended, and I truly appreciate the knowledge you bring to the forum.

Best,
Gun Doc

Hey Gun Doc. You’re not wrong at all. Rare is certainly relative and a .358 is not at all common. There are a lot of model 70s in the scarce and highly collectible category, which are not so rare (and valuable) that they are tempting for counterfeiters to fake. Nobody is faking National Match rifles, of which 1,971 were made. But we’ve seen fake Super Grade Featherweight rifles, of which 906 (I think) were made. The reason is that National Match rifles only fetch around $2,000, while the SG Fwt will be worth 2.5x that amount. Mostly, fakes in this price range are pretty unsophisticated,often just a collections of correct parts which were never together from the factory. However, when people begin faking pre-war carbines with fraudulent sub-200 serial numbers, or rare straight taper configurations in oddball calibers, these rifles can fetch $10,000 - $25,000 at auction, and this seems to be where the fake gun market been has mostly focused.

I agree gunner. That area looks to have been tampered with. That barrel stamp could have been tigged up, polished out, re-stamped and re-blued. That area stands out to me, but i work with steel all day long too...

Thanks for the lesson pre64win, appreciate the info.

BSA, yessir, awful suspect, if it's real fine, hope it finds a happy home, but, old men dying, and their widows/families freeing up rifles is one thing, the massive influx of rare guns is most troubling, maybe we could make purchase contracts with the caveat,........................."if this rifle is found to be fake, YOU get to wear it, permanently, sign on the dotted line sir"