Hey, stuff happens!

As Joe Farmer says, there is not a man alive who knows the true story of any antique rifle, period.

We are faced with 110+ year old artifacts, made up of many parts, most of which are completely interchangeable. All anyone can do is make a best assessment, using knowledge and logic. Obviously, some things just aren't "right" but, if a component was swapped, or assembled grossly out of order, long ago and has since acquired an honest patina, it can be impossible to tell.

I'll give a trapdoor example. The so-called (but never so marked) Model 1888 rod-bayonet rifle was the last major type made. Normally they will have serials over 500000, but there are two exceptions. Nearly all of the 1000 experimental M1884 rod-bayonet rifles, were disassembled and rebuilt as M1888s, yielding perfectly correct specimens of the latter in the 315-320xxx range. And, just before closing down TD fabrication, SA assembled all of the loose parts they could find, including some teardowns, giving us a relatively few M1888s with numbers anywhere from 97000 and up, with 1893 or 1894 (then current) cartouches.