reeder

I recently consigned a sword with Ray and it was a very easy, pleasant transaction. Ray communicated everything, and set the price commensurate to the sword, condition, etc. with the intent of selling it for market. I highly recommend Ray for any swords you may want to sell or buy. Everything was honest and straight forward, no surprises. Thanks Ray!

I had a blade where a tiny hagiri popped up after polish. 27 3/4” nagasa, really nice activity all through out. I liked it so I kept it. It was Teruhiro/Teruhide whatever that line of Shinto smiths was, but this was definitely a shin Shinto piece if genuine signature. Luis, I don’t recall ever having a blade signed Sa. I know a friend of mine did that he sold at SOS almost a decade ago. If it was me, for the future I always allow for an inspection period regardless of selling it on eBay or elsewhere. On returns, I don’t mind. I’m fortunate that I don’t need the money, this isn’t how I feed my family. Also, I know on these types of things you just need to see them in hand to be sure, and it’s not like they’re buying some $20 gadget of Amazon. i recently sent 3 blades to be polished and a 4th to get an opinion on whether or not worth the restoration that I just had a feeling something was special about it. I got a call when the swords arrived and was asked why I wasn’t polishing the one I sent for him to check out as it looked Rai, so off it went. Had another friend tell me the hamon looked like Rai kunitoshi to him as well. So fingers crossed, we’ll see how it turns out. One of the others was a mumei blade, almost 28” nagasa. One of my friends studied it in hand and was thinking Sekishu Naotsuna. The person that handles the polishing thought it was Shinto. So that one is a total gamble, but it had nice activity so will probably enjoy It anyways. Added some pics.

I am btreed3 on eBay. I started this at $1 and thought it was koto but I’m more of a gendai collector so I could easily be wrong. I’ve been purging my collecting the past 12 months and focusing on stuff I want to restore. I have 5 blades in Japan at the moment and this was in the queue but had plenty more in front of it as well. I have a no questions asked return policy if you decide you don’t want to take the risk of polishing or whatever other reason you may decide.

Hey George, no worries. I personally prefer to see the better stuff in fresh pro polish than rushed wartime polish and 75 years of neglect. To each his own. I still have plenty of excellent blades in wartime polish that I most likely won't have polished. Just trying to get the special ones done. Here are 2 Yasunori (Top - 1940, Bottom - 1934) I had done, but both badly needed saving. One had been used for martial arts by a previous owner for years and was quite beat up. Seems a lot of the activity is lost in the heavy hadori in the top blade. The activity in the bottom blade is much easier to see and enjoy.

Here's a couple of my Sukehiro. 27". I'll send this one for polish when I get some of the others that are out back in.

Nice Sukehiro! What is the nagasa.

Great to have you back!

Nice one!

Digging through everything is a ton of fun!

Another obvious fake. https://www.ebay.com/itm/114810368807

AOI one is papered & polished... 😉 this one looks nice and would definitely be worth the restoration, but price would need to be adjusted to reflect that.

Nice Kanetoshi. I had one with the same activity. Offered it here a while back for $1400 or so, no interest in it at all. 🤷‍♂️ Generally, the wartime Seki smiths are not highly regarded.

Kao Isshin Mantetsu Saku Kore, 1941.

Wish he had the $150 BIN when I looked at it a few days ago! Nice buy.

It's fine.

Nice Kanenori neil. Never saw one of his blades that wasn’t suguha and not sure I’ve seen showato kogarasu maru before. Is the blade thinner than usual? Same size?

Guess this blade is making the rounds. Seller started at $2k.

tensho.jpg (71×521) (japaneseswordindex.com) Tenshozan naval forge. Nicer than the average SS naval blade. Bummer about the mounts, well really just the tsuka.

Kajiyama Yasunori (1939, polished in Japan) & Kotani Yasunori (1940, polished by Takeo Seki), both 27”.

This is my listing and the Emura has sold. Thanks for the shoutout, Bruce. This one had great activity. This is a rare, better hamon IMO that Emura did. The other one I have posted has what I typically have seen on Emura examples. I was actually kind of hoping this one didn’t sell. I’m just upgrading, looking for top gendai smiths now - Shigetsugu, Yasunori, Yoshimune, Akihide (and students), Okimasa, etc, etc. preferably polished.

Great find, Tim! Pretty rare variation.

The group of 5 are Yasunori. The 2 are Tomita Sukehiro & Imai Sadashige.

Here’s some of my favorite gendai.

Didn’t know about the membership here. I liked the old raffles where you could donate tsuba or jssus memberships. I really would prefer to sell through NMB and donate the 10% eBay would take but tbh of the hundreds of swords I’ve gone through since being a member here, I can’t think of a single sword I’ve bought or sold through NMB. Wish it were a different story. Met lots of great people though!

Jim, you really hit this forum with a bang with your first 2 sword posts! Very nice examples and I imagine everyone here would love to have this Akihide in their collections, I know I want it!