I'm hoping somebody can help me make sense of a puzzling (to me, at least) little Balance I recently acquired.

It's a Golden Brown striated Lifetime vacuum-filler, in what I believe is the "Lady" size: ~4.75" long, ~.4" barrel diameter. It's got the streamlined flat-ball clip.

Here are two photos: a shot of the cap, and a close-up of the cap band.

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

What's intriguing, to me, is the fact that this pen has what appears, for all intents and purposes, to be a factory "Autograph" cap band. The engraving looks just like the work of Sheaffer's "honest forgers"; it's definitely a reproduced signature. The hallmark is where you would expect to find it, directly below the clip. But...

1. The cap band is clearly hallmarked "10K" as opposed to "14K." I know there were export-version 18K Autograph bands; were there also 10K versions?

2. The clip is unmarked, and is presumably gold filled. Now, I gather that some of the Autograph pens of this era feature solid-gold bands and gold-filled clips; I have a nice (later) Triumph-nibbed lever-filler in that configuration. But I thought those were all black, and I didn't think they were available in the "Lady" size.

3. I recall a post, a while back, in which it was noted that the Golden Brown color was not catalogued in an Autograph model (although such pens obviously do exist). Is that true?

So anyway: what have I got here? A special factory order? A jeweler's attempt to replicate Sheaffer's Autograph band? Something else?

Thanks for your help!

Jon