Fishman,
I looked at a 96 at Larry's West in Madison Alabama yesterday , price was $999 and change + tax . Last one I saw for sale prior to that was at the Reloading Bench in Mount Juliet Tennessee it was right at $800 , that was several years ago . Hard to call that undervalued considering they were in the $200-350 range when I bought mine . MY CG63 cost me less than $700 and I could have bought an original and complete sniper for $500 over that .
OP,
Scrap the screw on device and find one of the sleeves that screw on to protect the threads . They came in metal and soft plastic , either works bot the blued metal looks better . I tried several rifles with the device you mentioned attached and it did not improve the accuracy but it did seem to decrease the accuracy of one of the rifles a small amount . Take some cell phone pictures and post them , need to see the cuts to the stock you mentioned . Mine have no cuts that were not normal to the '96 but do exhibit some marks that look like they were stepped on by someone wearing hobnail boots . I have several like that .