"It would be foolish to assume that every auction service employs subject matter experts for every make of gun and period of their manufacture."


Come now. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If an auction service cannot employ an expert, that's fine. But then they lose their right to claim the gun is the real deal. They don't get to say it's the cream of the crop then hide behind "we aren't experts" when it turns out the gun is a phony.