David: Let me see if I 'm getting all this right.

A gun might have had all of its components sourced from Syracuse, NY and is physically "identical" (same tubes, same wood & frame-shape, and with identical appurtenant features to the earlier guns (same stop-checks, bushed firing pins, same engraving, same forend features and with identical overall dimensions) to the firearms being manufactured before the change of ownership to the Hunter Brothers, and yet it is "not" considered to be a Syracuse-sourced gun because it does not have the proper range of serial numbers affixed to it and it does not say "LC Smith, Maker, Syracuse, N. Y. on it's tubes? How very interesting.

From a purely "legal" perspective you are wholly correct. Different "owners" and then a different "place of origin" (when manufactured) will determine that "strictly-legal" distinction. As a practical matter, however, they are (or were) for at-least the first year of production in Fulton, NY, very-much the same as the guns being produced prior to the sale of the company by Lyman C. Smith.

Call me a heretic, but to the modern-day owners and users of these lovely old artifacts, that legal-distinction will have very-little meaning. Perhaps there are some "bragging-rights" associated with that "identity", and even some minor economic advantage might be gleaned by having "the genuine article" for sale, but little else seems to apply here.