Just to be clear, here: are we absolutely collectively certain that pre-existing items, during the brief window when they could have properties but didn’t, didn’t quietly default to the alphabetically first property they could have i.e. Blessed?

Okay, I’ve done a bit of digging.

First proposal was nethacking, which stated that items “defaulted at Untested.”
Tidying up BUC Status then changed that to: “Items are objects that can be held by an Explorer. Items have a name and zero or more Properties.”

There are two possible results of this:
1. The illegal “Untested” property would be lost, and the default would thus become zero properties.
2. The Untested property has been retained as there is no reason why it *can’t* be a property. This would not change the Cursed, Blessed or Uncursed property and its sole effect would be to permit the usage of scrolls on the item (which are otherwise broken). This scroll doesn’t seem to actually grant properties as such however, so it’s still broken but just in a different way.

At no point would the items gain the Blessed property.

Also, just to be a little more scam-proof, there might want to be a clause to say that someone who is currently possessed is not pure of heart. It might be overly cautious though, since that is implied.

See what I mean about endgame caution? Clause added.

Yes, I do see what you mean about endgame caution :)