[Edward Tinker]

Doug, to me there is a big difference in german guns and american guns. Simply put, german guns are individually numbered on their parts. You can find 1911, M1 carbine, etc parts and they are period correct and if they exhibit the same wear then it is pretty hard to tell they have been swapped. And no offense, but I have known a few collectors of garands and carbines who striven for years to match up all the parts, such as for a winchester and in reality, winchester guns many times had other manufacturer parts in them.

So, your comments about restoring are kinda based on apples and oranges.

I have no idea what the hell a 'gotcha gun" was until you described one.

There is a huge difference in someone committing fraud. Someone restoring to make it nicer, someone restoring to sell as original and someone who finds a period, correct part number and swaps out an incorrect part, to me that is not fraud. But when the numbers look vastly different, because parts were made by DWM, Erfurt, Simson, Mauser and the Swiss (besides east Indies parts, DDR parts, etc), then it makes it difficult to correctly match them up. And if someone takes a blank part and places a number on it, well, thats fraud to me...


Ed