A gun with a known historical association is a tangible connection to our collective past, and such connections are rare and precious things. Precious implies value, value implies price, and the question always arises for a collector – exactly how much is history worth?

The "faking" of firearms is not a new phenomenon. Back in the 1800’s the practice of peddling shoddy merchandise marked so as to fool the unwary into thinking he was purchasing a quality gun was not unusual. Witness the many 19th century single shot percussion pocket pistols marked "Derringer" or "Deringe" or some other variation of the famous Deringer name, or the European copies of S&W Model 3 Topbreak revolvers that even went so far as to duplicate the S&W barrel address markings.