ted williams game-used bat in mears auction that ended last night: calling all game-used bat experts!!

[KAPKOLLEKTOR]

regarding lot 275 in the mears auction that ended last night, the 1955-60 Ted Williams Boston Red Sox H&B Louisville Slugger Professional Model W183 Game Bat MEARS A6 (see link below), did this bat hammer for more or less than it shouldve??? (it hammered for $3141 and the final price was $3691 after the 17.5% buyers premium). i would love to get a williams gamer one of these days and thought about placing a bid on it but just dont know enough about bats yet to know what to look for. what is a bat like this typically worth??? i was looking at realized prices for similar bats on both the legendary auctions and mears websites and they seem to be all over the place. any opinions on this particular one??? how is this bat different from a team index bat??? and who's to say that this bat simply couldnt be a store model bat that someone added a "9" to the knob with a vintage magic marker??? i guess what i'm trying to say is what's to stop someone from adding the W183 engraving/branding to the knob with a number/letter marker and then adding a "9" to it???; (i've used this argument before here regarding vintage caps, that being anyone can basically take a vintage magic marker and add a number to the underside of the visor of a vintage cap and say it was a specific players cap). i'm certainly not saying that this is the case here with this bat, but rather i'm just wondering what the bat experts out there have to say.

http://www.mearsonlineauctions.com/LotDetail.aspx?lotid=43190

[ironmanfan]

What exactly is a "vintage magic marker?"

[David]

For magic markers, it means early modern