Or Les Pauls robbed of their PAFs and drilled out for coil tap switches...
One thing we can blame the Internet for is helping create a better league of counterfeiter. It seems that in the '70s, guys like Dick Knight could re-top a '68 Les Paul (or '50s goldtop), refinish it some totally inaccurate burst colour and write a 1959 serial number on the headstock with a Sharpie marker and famous guitarists would pay for the results! Scott Gorham rocked a dodgy conversion burst in the '70s, and Rick Nielsen has sported a couple of dodgy bursts more recently.
Some of those pre-CBS Fenders may now be sporting solid finishes.
The Chinese fakers also build Les Pauls with horribly incorrect details, and there are hundreds of threads online outlining where they went wrong. I wonder if any Chinese builder has ever had a look at any of them?!?!
I've watched the 'Chinabacker' builders slowly improve their fake 4003 basses. A lot of them started out with the bridge pickup far closer to the bridge (like on old Hondo copies, oddly enough) but a few have slowly moved the pickup closer to the correct position. I saw recently that a UK-based player had a RM1999 copy made up by a Chinese builder, with lost of trial and error thrown in. He basically trained a Chinese plant to make the right thing. You even get fake Chris Squire basses these days!
As for predicting collectability of instruments, J. Mascis, Kurt Cobain et al were using Fender's offsets because they were unloved and cheap to buy back then. Things have changed there! Jack White made previously uncool, unloved catalogue guitars popular... nobody really saw that coming either.