If I were going to reproduce a badge, I would make every attempt to make it look as close to the original or what others perceived as original, as possible. My badge bares no resemblance to the stamped badge, it's even slightly larger, why would someone take such painstaking measures to fake a badge that looked fake?
I am certain that 100 years ago when these bikes were produced, the first iterations didn't just pop out as exact duplicates of each other. There were parts being supplied by several different manufacturers and if something ran out, what did they do, hault production or did they make substitutions? Same with the end of production, HD had to know when they were winding down production that substitutions were going to be made because they were no longer ordering or producing large quantities of parts.
Anyone who says they "NEVER" did this or the "ALWAYS" did that, 100 years ago, is frankly full of themselves. WW1 changed they way EVERTHING was manufactured. Some materials were more readily available than others and substitutions were common. Look at automotive manufacturers today, they have modes like, Special Edition, Limited, etc, usually because of changes occurring from one year to the next and reduction of parts production but they still produced a vehicle.