like a Rolex from a street vendor

As usual when I catch a new project, I've been doing some reading and documentary-watching about violins, and here is my biggest takeaway:

The world of violins is a snake-pit of treachery and blind faith, and we guitarists should appreciate how lucky we are.

Really truly old guitars don't sound very good. Guitar manufacture has responded wonderfully to modern techniques and materials, and then the guitar in its current form is at most 200 years old. If you actually had a 200-year old guitar, you would donate it to a museum and probably play something from the past 60 years instead.

By contrast, the violin achieved its final form in the 1700s (Stradivari died in 1737), to the extent that modern violins are mostly copies (often quite carefully done) of examples made by the Stradivari, Amati, or Guarneri shops. There's no shame in this: my guitar is a brilliant, patent-infringing postwar Japanese copy of a classic Martin style. It doesn't say "Martin" on it, though. It says "Nashville," which doesn't really make any sense, but sends an honest signal of "this guitar was made by a company that never really existed, and contains no original design work whatsoever."

People have been copying Cremonese violin designs for centuries, but they've also never been shy about just sticking a "ANTONIUS STRADIVARIUS CREMONENSIS FACIEBAT 1713" label inside and calling it good to go. In that case the one thing you know you haven't got is a Stradivarius, but then you're at a loss as to what you actually have. Following the old adage that "90% of everything is crap," that's probably what you have. Much like wine, get some pointers from someone in the know, then get whatever you enjoy.