I guess the problem with establishing what the facts of the matter is that we're dealing with people who aren't so keen or even knowledgable on the facts, including Ringo himself. These guys are not like us in terms of knowing the finer points of Rickenbacker guitars, how to tell a re-issue from a real vintage one, or even how to tell one model from another. It's just not that important to them. There's also the issue of them basically telling the interviewer what they want to hear, or allowing themselves to be kind of lead by the desire of what the interviewer wants them to say, in order to make a good story for the fans. It's what they do for a living...
It calls to mind a similar claim that held for quite some time, with many people also swearing it to be true, that Ringo had one of George's performance Country Gents. This threw the cat among the pigeons as various other accounts have one being traded for another guitar (perhaps the Tenny), and one falling off the back of the lorry on the way to a gig, and a few other storys. I believe in the end it turned out that any Gent that Ringo had (if there was indeed one permanently in his possession) would have been a re-issue. It seems poor Ringo has the reputation of getting hand-me-down beatle guitars. Perhaps the 1996 story is a continuation of the Gent story ala chinese whispers or perhaps not. We will most likely never know the facts on either guitar.
