John Doe commissioned some cues and was told it was made by John Smith. Therefore Doe represents what was told by Smith and/or associates. Goes get a batch commissioned and other guy gets it outsourced.
Don't know exactly what you guys are talking about, and don't want to know really. But this post reminded of something that happened to me just a few years ago.
About 4-5 years ago a friend asked me if I could check out this .22 rifle she'd been left by her recently deceased grandfather. She wanted to know if it was functional and could safely be fired, since she was taught how to shoot on that gun and wanted to teach her son and daughter to shoot with it.
Anyway, I took it apart as much as I could and cleaned what I could clean. But certain units mystified me, so I went on YouTube and tried to look the thing up. Surprisingly, I found not one reference to this particular gun anywhere on YT. The gun was a Higgins or a Wiggins, btw. Sold by Sears about 80 years ago.
I tried looking it up on Google and the rest and nada. How insane is that? The freaking interwebs didn't have a single answer to my question? I felt like I broke the internet or my computer or something.
Finally I asked if anyone on the various gun forums I visit had any idea where to find some info on this gun. Finally one of the wise old elves on one of the forums told me the gun was actually built by Savage Arms on a limited run contract for Sears in honor of one of their former employees, Higgins or whatever.
Well, at that time Savage was busy building a lot of other guns for some other contract, and so Savage decided to sub-contract out the Sears gun contract to yet another company that I can't remember the name of now. In that process some modifications were made to the final gun, but fortunately it was still close enough that I could still use the specs and disassembly/assembly instructions for the Savage Arms rifle that was supposed to be the Sears gun.
So technically the rifle was really manufactured by this third company. But since the design and specs were originally from Savage, the gun is considered a Savage. The WOE graciously sent me a copy of his owner's manual of the gun. Guy actually collected owner's manuals for old guns.
So there are two morals to this story: One, you never really know who's building your stuff. And two, always pay your respects to the wise old elves. They will save your ass more often than not.
Oh, and in case any of you were wondering, I got the gun disassembled and inspected, cleaned, lubed and reassembled finally. The gun checked out and I fired 10 rounds through it and gave it back to my friend. She taught her daughter to shoot her first rounds with it last year when she turned ten. I was there. Good memory.
P.S. just came to me. The other manufacturer was Stevens Arms Co.