Original or altered?

[Dean Romig]

This is Kathy's set of 28 gauge Repro barrels. It looks the same to me.

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[Wild Skies]

I've said it before and I'll say it again . . . It's the itty bitty details that make the big big difference. It's these itty bitty things that offer clues to help us determine originality. Originality may be insignificant to some, but does mean a great deal to others.

Now I realize we're splitting hairs here Dean, but look at the Q and the 1 and 2 following the Q on Kathy's gun, the fonts of the letters and the numbers appear the same size. Whereas, the Q on the subject gun appears a skosh smaller, at least to my eyes, than the numbers of the subject gun. Three more things: 1) I see sanding marks under the choke stampings (especially under the Q1 stamp) and the bluing actually appears to have been sanded away, 2) a little different shape to the curlyque on the Q of the subject gun compared to a known-to-be-original-factory Q stamp (as James Rhodenizer suggested in his post above) and 3) don't the numeral 1's appear a little different, too?

I am again showing the subject gun as well as an original factory Q1/Q2 stamping for ease of reference.