Looks like scaling to me, the way scaling is dealt with when forging depends a bit on the composition of the metal and the heat that is used (lots of heat=lots of scaling, you can eat away a lot of the material just in scaling if you work too hot). Normally after you acquire practice working scaling wont be a problem. These days "hand made" forging doesn't necessarily mean a guy hammering away on the piece over an anvil. Its usually open die forging: the guy moves the piece from one hydraulic hammer to the other, as each has a different shaped head and the metal can spread at the sides, until the final shape is obtained. That's opposed to the close die forging where there is a die with the final product shape and the metal is formed into it by one single hammer and this one can be all automated. They both are forms of drop forging but the first one often falls into the "hand forged" just because there's a worker moving the piece to shape it.
While scaling can be just a surface thing, so it wont matter much and can still be removed by you (and btw, some can be left on purpose as hand made sort of aesthetic reason), what would worry me is what is visible in your first picture, right at the back of the ground edge, forming a sort of C, it seems like the edge of a rather big chip (unless its just the picture that fools the eye). Can be that is somehow fused or a proper crack, its hard to say on the ground side because grinding moves the metal over a bit but it shows the depth of it.
Also the darker corner (up and left) on the edge would make me think that they started grinding there and it got too hot while doing the rest. Others might have different opinions on that.