If I recall, when I looked up the serial number it fell into the 1955 or 1956 time frame, so that seems to jibe with what you saw on the Smith and Wesson forum. I'm curious where you found that information exactly because I did Yahoo searches and looked on two different Smith & Wesson forums and couldn't find anything helpful.
There is no serial number underneath the barrel, but then there is nothing under the barrel of my 10-7 either. I'm not sure why that would be the case, or when they did and didn't put those numbers in place.
Yes, I have gotten to the point where I hardly even bother to read the actual description on Gunbroker. I mainly go by the pictures. it is amazing how much information in the description is obviously incorrect based on just a casual perusal of the pictures. That is why I don't even bother to look at any ads that have no pictures or stock photos, because you literally have no idea what they're going to send you if you bid on it. It's really frustrating and even kind of amusing at the same time, how they will have a picture of a revolver with a 5 inch barrel, and then in the item description they say it has a 4-inch barrel, but then under the item characteristics they will say it has a 6-inch barrel, what the hell. And of course there are those item descriptions that don't tell you anything at all about the item but have 20 paragraphs about their return policy and feedback and blah blah blah, or some sort of political rant... I really don't even understand how some people ever manage to sell anything.
Of course I also get highly suspicious when they have several pictures of one side of the firearm and not a single one of the other side, or a lot of pictures from really weird angles, or several pictures that are crystal clear sharp and then the only picture of the left side is so blurry you can't even tell if it's a firearm. I mean you know they took it with a digital camera so the result is available immediately. It's not like they had to send the pictures off to be developed and got them back and said oh crap these are blurry.