I'm trying to make sense of a chrome snare that came with an old drum set I bought last weekend. When I got home and started cleaning it, I noticed that it had scroll work all the way around the shell, and a two-line logo that said "Ludwig Chicago." 

I've matched the scroll design with an early 1920s Black Beauty shown in detail on a Chicago drum shop's website. The weight and construction of my snare suggests it also is a Black Beauty, or Deluxe if you will.

 But the lugs are Imperials, which didn't make their debut until 1935 or so. And the exterior is chrome, rather than the typical black nickel.

 So how does an apparent Black Beauty from the 20s wind up with lugs from the mid-30s or later, and change color? As I understand from other posts here, engraving on chrome is unwise because the metal can chip.

So it would seem that the scrollwork came before the chrome plating. I know there were some anniversary-edition Deluxes in the mid-30s that were chrome plated, but I don't know if they had scrollwork. And I've read that only a handful of those exist. 

Occam's razor would suggest that somebody made changes to the drum, for whatever reason. But are there any other alternate explanations or theories?