Can anyone help pleeease...

Hello to anyone who reads this,
I am hoping I can ask for help without upsetting anyone as trying to trace my pony's origins.
I was given him by friends who bought him for pennies as a 2/3 yr old and were told that he was a wb/tb , shown the mare and told the wb stallion had been a livery that jumped out. Simple enough however he has only made 14.1 and at 13 or thereabouts is not going to be growing any more. I have tracked down the supposed breeder and the mares pedigree and I hope to visit and see what I can find out about the other side and hopefully get some sort of cohesive pedigree for him. However when trying to find contacts for him I was warned that he had been known to buy nf foals and pass them off as other types to unsuspecting buyers. I do not have an awful lot of faith in the person who said this so pinch of salt all round but best to go fully armed. This pony could be a wb/tb of the old fashioned type and I have bred a couple of foals from him(for myself mostly and on special request) or he could be a very smart nf or nf partbred.
My questions are this can anyone tell me whether that far back anyone still earmarked their ponies if ever(frosty reception from all native pony studbooks when asking about this but I am genuine and not trying to incriminate anyone just want to know) and if so what would those marks have looked like? This boy has always had curious ear tips, they are very slightly blunt but on an angle and the hair grows longer so the shape looks the same, this longer hair can look a bit greasy some times. I just thought he had odd ears and have a picture of one his daughters with similar looking greasy tips and all the foals have very similar(large) ears to him. I came on here because flicking through the pictures I found a stallion(will have to look and see which one) that in the picture(could have been the light) had ears like his. Could this odd ear ness be a subtle ear mark or were they always the more obvious nicks out of the side and did anyone ever mark nf ponies in this way.
Second question is - as I don't think based on what he passes on to his foals(much longer legs than his own even on the pony crosses) that he is pure nf, did anyone ever run tb mares on the forest or similar?
I apologise hugely if I end up wasting all your time but I would really like to find out and feel if I go to the breeder with my armoury full then I am more likely to get useful information to go further with.
There are pictures (wooly winter ones) on my facebook stud page, CherryGarden Stud if anyone wants to look at him, please excuse the last years photo's of his son looking like a rescue pony he is better under the fluff and is on Kevin Sparrows site on the Writtle futurity pics. Someone might look at them and say he is defo a nf/welsh cross?
Thanks again
Polly

Okay I couldn't find the stallion I was looking for but having looked again as always am thinking he could be pure bred although has more bone than I generally associate with nf and bigger, flatter joints with a more let down hind leg/hock. So hard to tell, you can see all the different types that have been used to improve them over the years, they really could be anything as could he if you didn't know.....

Link to photos: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.172878246095082.36776.163488537034053&type=3

He looks a nice sort but I wouldn't like to hazard a guess on whether he could be a New Forest or even a part-bred. As you've already said, there is no one type that is instantly recognisable as a forester. But from the photos he certainly apears to have the temperament of a New Forest pony stallion

Southern Counties Auctioneers run the pony sales at Beaulieu Road, but I don't know how much information they would be able to give you. They usually like to know the date of the sale and the lot number of the pony. They would charge you for doing a search, and really all you can give them is the year of birth and the name and address of the purchaser. If that person buys lots of ponies then you're scuppered I'm afraid. And even if they could identify which sale and which lot, the chances of them having any information as to parentage are quite low, especially if this was before passports, most colts being sold without being registered.

I haven't heard of ear marking being used on NF ponies, but that doesn't mean it hasn't happened in the past.

I'd think it unlikely that anyone would run TB mares on the forest as they wouldn't have the skills and hardiness to get through the winter. However, commoners can run any breed of pony on the forest - they aren't restricted to NFs - and some commoners may have mares that they winter on their own land and run on the forest in the spring/summer.

Thank you Admin,
I have spoken to the nice lady on the phone at the New forest pony office, who could only find one pony owned by the person he came from on a nf ID only passport so if he did buy lots he bought from someone else. I am really just trying to get as much ammo as possible before I go down so I can try and get the info I need. It is likely a dead loss but I can try. He did say that at the time the stallion jumped out there was a nf mare in the field too who was also covered and I always wondered if the foals got muddled but on the other hand I have known plenty of older type wb's that didn't grow, many May Cherif are like that. It was the ears more than anything that made we wonder all of a sudden but New forest would have not been silly at the time and passports and papers were not really a worry as DNA was barely thought of....
Ho hum thanks for the help and yes he does have a lovely temperament doesn't he as do his children.
I love him absolutely and completely and he owes me nothing, would just like to know.