This is the fairy tale I've heard more than once:

There was an original.. It just didn't belong to Steele...
The story was Steele talked the owner into letting him have the ring to make a few ink imprints with it to give away to some big spenders.

What actually ended up happening is that a copy was made of the ring without the owner knowing until later which caused a rift between them,, but Steele had the copy.!
From there all sorts of stories and things started happening. More and more 'authentic' HG rings started becoming made for sale etc.

Now,,this is all hearsay. It was a long time ago and the players aren't even alive anymore!

I have inspected a couple of these exact rings. They were nice but not good enough detail and the hallmarks were easy to see were fake if you knew what you were looking at.