I have the gold plated one and a raw pewter one. Honestly I believe it is all due to the picture quality and flash illumination. I do not believe the details are different. I do see some smoothing in his buckle back side but perhaps this could be due to the buckle been actually used/worn on a belt (that would be the awesomest thing ever).

I bid for both items and I actually stopped bidding as soon as I knew who the other bidder was

I do think a thousand bucks is a perfectly fair price for an item this rare. In my experience hunting for these I would rank the raw pewter one as the most "common" and the gold plated one as the rarest.

Good luck!