Guns get rebuilt and parts get swapped all the time for various reasons. I have a VM that I put a 5" barrel on to replace a damaged 4" original. It happens. If your gun was indeed a 2" VM that's a real shame as it would be worth a lot of money in original configuration. If the letter is correct (and mistakes do happen I would ask that the barrel length be confirmed) then somebody really messed up a rare gun. But I'm sure there was a good reason to do it...and the owner had no idea what he was doing.

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