I need some help ID'ing a Garand belonging to a friend of mine. The story I got was "my uncle got it from the widow of one of his Marine buddies. His buddy bought it from Springfield Armory in the '52-'54 timeframe. Never been shot."

Obviously, the entire story is suspect, due to...well, everything about it. I asked for more detail, and they sent me this picture of the receiver heel:



Now I'm even more confused. The lettering seems to be much lower quality than any Garand I have (or have seen), with uneven depth and formation, and the 7M+ serial number seems to be well after SA ceased production.

Any ideas what I'm looking at here? Is there some late batch of M1's SA produced and then marked poorly with electro-pencil? Is this a legit SA Garand? If so, any idea of production year?

I want to help this guy out, but I'm afraid I'm going to have bad news. The last part of the note I got was "It's been appraised at $7000." I think he's in for disappointment.

Thanks for the help.