Barrett Jackson COPO Camaro

[Verne_Frantz]

Tim,
I appreciate all the effort you and others have gone through to educate yourselves enough to detect restamps and other "cloning" methods. I can also appreciate the efforts by NCRS to educate more people so they can determine the real from the fake. Never the less, a Top Flight award is given to a car for its "appearance" of originality. Many people who are interested in purchasing a quailty Corvette are not as educated as you are. To them, the Top Flight award is their "proof" that they're getting a real car. I know that the NCRS has tried to make it clear that that is not what the award means, but unfortunately, the award does add a lot of value to a car, whether it's deserved or not.
As I said, the art of broaching and restamping would have been refined anyway over time, purely as a part of fraud and misrepresentation of high dollar cars, but the judging criteria of the NCRS (based on appearance of originality) literally opened the doors for the craft to be perfected. In plain language, what they're saying is that it's perfectly ok to have a "restoration motor" in your car, as long as we can't tell it's a fake. You get the same credit as a real one.
Personally, I not accept a restamped block as just another step in the restoration process. Afterall, the replacement engine has not been "restored"; its been altered to appear to be something it never was. As long as awards are bestowed to cars because they "appear" to be just like one Chevrolet might have built, the forgery business will flourish. The true history of those cars has been changed. Maybe its just me, but I'd rather see a car's history preserved rather than seeing a reproduction of something that might have been built.

Verne