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I am no Paterson expert, but I have never seen or heard of one with the barrel marking individually stamped in modern font block letters. They are all marked in script letters; the 7" barrel guns were roll stamped, while the others appear to have been hand engraved. I think it safe to say that no matter who made that gun, Sam Colt had nothing to do with it.
Did they make fake Patersons in 1840? I don't know, but they made them at least as early as the 1930's and have been making them ever since. A fellow named Penrod Otis Musser worked in the 1930s and 1940s and did such a good job of making copies that his guns are sought after by today's collectors for themselves, and actually are rarer than real Patersons, though not as valuable.
There have been, as you know, Italian copies, but before that there were copies made in Belgium and Spain. While the makers claimed to be making innocent repros, many of those later were "aged" and passed off as original. But even there, the ones I have seen had the script barrel lettering and got it right, although I saw a picture of a "one off" fake with "Patterson" on the barrel. Many were made in small shops in the hope of turning a quick buck, and I think the gun shown is one of those. It appears to be a rather bad fake, not even rating as a good reproduction. Incidentally, the original gun did use those four pin nipples; a few repros have used standard nipples.
Still, at the right price, those fakes are interesting, and if done right will serve to show the way the Paterson was put together, which is of interest in itself.
Jim
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