Ways to verify I have a legit sharpmaker?

[bleasure]

Are there any bona fide ways to make sure the SM I received is legit? I recognize that a whole sharpmaker is going to be a difficult thing to clone exactly, and so far the actual article I received seems OK.

The seller seriously weirded me out though, I bought it for a reasonable resale price and they 'shipped' it right away from VA, despite being listed as located in IL. It then supposedly sat in a VA post office for a week; when I asked if they knew why they did nothing but send me a tracking # and the message 'pls wait.' A week later the tracking info changed again, this time to California. I asked them to explain several times and got either no reply, or the same cut and pasted tracking info. And that infuriating little note. "Pls wait." YOU please wait, I would yell at my screen victoriously.

Ultimately though this made me wonder if this was either just a plain ol scam on me, or some kind of more complex drop shipping scam, or somebody's ended up with some SM'ers that fell off a truck outside the warehouse or something and I shouldn't go asking too many questions.

It arrived yesterday, and It seems like it may be legit, if possibly used - having never used one before I have nothing to compare with. The stones wiggle a bit more in their bases than I expected but that doesn't seem too off to me. The safety rods are silver in color instead of brass, but I feel like I see both in an image search. I'm sure I'm just being paranoid after the weird experience with this seller, but if there's a way to be sure I got what I paid for, I'd appreciate it.

[Sharp Guy]

I've never heard of a fake Sharpmaker.

The stones do move around in the slots but they sit pretty when you put back pressure on them. I improved the slots a little when I made the special bases for one of the guys here. The stones vary in size a little. So there has to be enough clearance to fit all. There's always going to be at least a little wiggle

They changed the safety rods from brass to aluminum awhile back

[bleasure]

I've never heard of a fake Sharpmaker.

The stones do move around in the slots but they sit pretty when you put back pressure on them. I improved the slots a little when I made the special bases for one of the guys here. The stones vary in size a little. So there has to be enough clearance to fit all. There's always going to be at least a little wiggle

They changed the safety rods from brass to aluminum awhile back

Danke, I'm satisfied. That's what I figured with the stones, just intrinsic leeway built in for safety when standardizing variable elements of a product, these don't move so much they seem suspect per se.

[yablanowitz]

Sounds like the unit is more legit than the seller. My guess would be a drop shipper who discovered his regular supplierxand first backup were both out of stock.