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runscottI start getting nervous twitches when I see rare books sliced up. But this is like anything else on ebay - when a particular item type gains popularity and begins selling for ridiculous prices, anything that looks remotely similar gets hopefully labeled as such, with the accompanying wishful thinking credentials (rare uncatalogued "M" type, etc., experts perplexed, etc.) to pump up the value.
I don't consider this malice - but rather, trying to get all you possibly can out of a picture that you're not sure what it is. To me it's obvious what it ISN'T, but I would not presume that to be the case with the seller or yourself - thus the tips. Also, I'm not sure that I haven't done the same thing at times, but with different items.
Related topic - take the Burr McIntosh pictures - these are almost exclusively pictures cut out of a high-quality magazine. It's obvious on the ones that still have the three holes at the bottom from where the magazine was bound (with thick string), but since the magazine had an odd, "supplement-like" size, you see people trim off the holes at the bottom and describe these as supplements when in fact they aren't. I've seen these pictures go for $400, and it's inexplicable. I used to buy them for $15 and frame them - I had no problem with removing the strings and the high-quality picture from a magazine that otherwise contained mostly rubbish (fashion drawings, pictures of high-society folk,etc.).
Now, here's the real amazing thing: you could actually order any plate from Burr McIntosh, and they would mail one that had not been bound! To date, I have never seen one of these, but it would be much closer to the definition of a supplement.