sturmbichon

Hello. I need your help to read this shirasaya. Thanks.

Thanks Ludolf !!! You are of great help !! i'll check my Haynes tonight.

2

2

Anyone can read the signature of this tsuba ? Also, what era can it be ? Thanks

nakago

Hello, I just bought this shingunto, and quality of the blade turn out to be way better than expected. Hamon has a lot of activity and it's in really good condition. It is signed Kunimitsu, undated. There are several Kunimitsu registered in showa era, and I wonder if anyone has an idea on which one it could be. I only post two pics of the nakago tonight, it's 11PM, light suck, I'll post pics of blade and temper line later. Thanks.

Hello, don't know what to think about this auction. Buy it now was $50.000, no reserve, and it ends at $802$... http://cgi.ebay.fr/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie ... AA:FR:1123 Would love to read your opinions.

#2 is my favorite!!!! do you have the address of the club ^^

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... K:MEWAX:IT Sold yesterday on ebay, Sadaharu Not listed in Slough, and none listed on Hawley for WW2 period...

Something I forgot to add... and several collectors feel the same. Here, I hope to offend the dealers a bit, and hope they'll change... when you enter thoses french shops, you don't feel welcome. If you don't look like someone that is about to spend couple grands, or you are not an already good and wealthy customer, they have no interest in you, and show it. The nastiest answer I ever had from the one in the louvres, 10years ago or so, was "i don't have anything that would suit you" when I asked about the price of a sword in their window, since nothing had a price tag at that time. was it too hard to say 1000, 2000, even 10000 and i would have say "thank you"... In USA, in Japan, and I'm sure in UK, I talked to several dealers, entered several shops, and have always been welcome. Best ! In Tokyo, the owner of Japan Swords show me the entire collection for more than 20 minutes, and I didn't buy anything ! I just came to ask if he can rewrap a tsuka. So, I'll keep buying in USA, UK and Japan, and ignore local market, as most of my collector buddies do.

However there are dealers, shops: Espace 4....http://espace4.com/ Nihon Antiquaire....http://www.nihonantiquaire.com/g2zmenu.php?idPage=17 Japon Antique Objets D'Arts Du Japon-Armes, Armures Louvres des Antiquaires 75001 Paris Tel:01-42-61-56-88 Eric Not to offend anyone, but this kind of shop is far from proposing the same ratio of quality/price than we can find in the US market. France never had any soldier fighting in the pacific, so there is ZERO vet bring back sword in France. French did NOT had the same mentality as preserving military objects ater the war, anything military was not a collector, but a tool to be used. Unlike in the US where all thoses flags/helmets/daggers/swords.... end up in closets an were preserved as souvenirs and trophy's. I have an almost complete K98 bayonet collection. Probably 330 comes from show in the USA or ebay.us , and 20 from french (or belgian or german) shows or web. Even i saw hundreds of them for sale in France (Be, Ge), they are mostly crap and maybe 10% of them are worth collecting. At best. I've been in several SOS, probably over 50% of what I saw was worth collecting. For swords in even simplier. What you see in shows in FR, BE, GE is either fakes or trash sold as rare nihonto and tagged accordingly. Or you go to high end antiques shops...thoses shops simply buy on overseas website or collections, bring back to France, and add their premium on the sale tag. What I learnt from all thoses years of collecting: buy from the country it was made in, or from the country it was brung back as souvenir. So for swords.... USA, UK, AUS or Japan !

I always start as a collector, buying one or two, then get into accumulating. I started my K98 bayonet collection with buying one, to match with my k98 rifle, now I have over 350 bayonets... I started my sword collection february 2010, (always wanted one since i was kid), but never dared to buy any, cause in France, the only market is ebay.... bought several books before, then bought my first... it was a nice one, so, keep on buying... Now I have 8. And knowing myself well, it's not going to stop at 8....

here is a picture of my Kanemichi, with sho stamp...

Should be a commercial or promotional item... She got partial translation. The first part means textually: "Need to hydrate? Thirsty? Skin Bamboo" then the last characters means nothing altogether: "Beauty tale, the right colon" SO.... maybe with a great digestive tract, this beverage will bring beauty.... My wife adds: "looks like some stupid western tatoo that do not make any xxxxing sense"...

Just textoed the pics to my wife and she says it looks like an old Japanese poem. she's trying to translate it. More later i hope...

Thanks Stephen !! that's a very informative link. A very good picture to show how a Hagire (sorry, thirteen Hagire) look like ! I saw drawing of Hagire on all my books, but never a clear picture of a real one actually...

I'm going to Tokyo in 3 weeks. Anyone knows if i can go to a shop like OAI, and if i find a sword i like, buy it and leave the shop then bring it back to France in my luggage, as like i do in USA?? Or is it a specific way to export a blade? thanks

you are right, that's why i was saying it's too bad he treat them like that. Better leave them alone...

OK... I see, so thoses hamons are genuine, just enhanced by acid treatment. My concern was thoses sword all have "fancy" and very original shaped hamons, and I thought the acid treatment may have resulted in giving thoses nice shapes.

So thanks a lot to sporkkaji who started this post, otherwise i would have bought the first one thinking it was nice with such a great hamon. But after reading the post, i checked past auctions and saw many have this similar pattern. Which is too bad cause without thoses fake fancy hamons, thoses swords would be nice!! Thanks Namagaki

Sorry i'm still lacking the vocabulary. So regarding what Mark was fearing, NO, there is absolutely no crack looking like Hajire. I thought he was talking about the " ware in the shinogi-ji " So that's good news for my sword. Thanks Sebastien

another one

would thoses blade's hamons looks acid etched too ?