reeder

Let it go and move on. Cost will be greater than $200 to re-wrap + whatever the menuki cost. Sell as parts for someone else's project or sell together as a project. Sometimes you make some money, sometimes lose some, and sometimes just get your money back.

Thanks!!! I don't have any low grade showato at the moment. Mostly mid-grade gendaito/RJT smiths. About to go through the swords and see what I can live without. Know there's a few by Nagamitsu & a nice type 3 w/ RJT mumei blade. I might let go of some a few by good smiths that are a little shorter than I like, but probably will wait for others I'd prefer to move to go first.

Ray has a sadakatsu tanto for $3k less...

It has a wood lacquered saya...

Don’t mind at all. If you give me a couple of weeks I’ll get some better pics with a better camera and check for other markings in the mount.

Here’s one off the saya from a sword i recently purchased.

That's a lot of low grade, uninteresting smiths to learn their style and signitures on.... I doubt anyone that spends their time studying nihonto is going to waste the time on blades that don't have much to offer. We have Slough's & Stein's to compare the signatures to already. Maybe folks can work with Brian to add oshigata to Stein's website? Probably better served to set up a sticky or FB group than submit to a shinsa type team for in hand inspection & papers. Seems plenty of people post stuff all the time as it is on all of the various platforms so what's the point? Not sure if anyone collects pocket knives, but the fakes have gotten pretty much identical to the real ones. I've heard that a lot of the fakes are mostly made from the left over parts to assemble & sell at a fraction of the price. So essentially buying the same knife from the same plant, just 1 is approved and the other isn't. So I've been told, pocket knives were never my thing.

Here’s another.

Never paid attention to it whether or not the mon were on showato. Have had many swords come and go. Have had great blades you would have never guessed would have been in plain Type 98 mounts w/ no upgrades (e.g. pierced tsuba, mon, etc.) and had total junk seki blades in mounts I was certain was going to have something spectacular. I want to say I've had/seen mantetsu-to w/ mon. I think I had a mantetsu-to that was missing the mon, it was dated 1939. Maybe it had the mon, maybe not, have had a dozen or two of them and let them go while they were hot and hard to keep them all straight.

Very nice!

I think Stephen has a really nice Torio Hiromasa for around $2K...

Ouch. Sorry to hear. Hopefully it can be returned for a refund.

Yep, I replied to him same day it was posted and said I’d take it and provided my number, never heard back from him.

for $280 or whatever he was asking just grab it and figure it out later.

It's not eBay, there was a new ruling/law/whatnot that allowed states to elect to collect sales tax on online sales from out of state sellers regardless whether or not they had a physical presence in that state. IIRC this is from the decision on Wayfair v. S. Dakota. I suppose you'll see PayPal (as well as other payment processers) automatically collecting the sales tax on transactions if they haven't started already.

Congrats that the PO didn’t run it over with a truck and destroy it like my Yoshimune. ????

I read it, it doesn’t change the fact that the RJT document provided by Chris clearly lists the blade must be dated among other requirements. Could there be examples that slipped through? Maybe. I have traditionally made blades by RJT smiths that aren’t star stamped but not sure I’ve seen undated star stamped blades.

Being dated was one of the requirements to receive the star stamp.

I have 3 gendaito all katana length in matching WWII mounts all at or under $2,000.

There’s couple of eBay sellers selling blades with similar aged nakagos. Their swords are bad and this looks like one. Iirc the listings usually are “the Japanese samurai sword”.

Bummer, not fun taking losses. Had one that was papered to interesting shinto smith, mumei though, but 27.5" nagasa, tobiyaki, premium gunto mounts, hang tag.... lost about $1000 on eBay auction. Sword didn't even break $1500

Nice find, how long is the cutting edge?

I have a tough time with tassels but they did buy all of the swords from US sellers last decade...

another poorly done gimei - https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F114016905761

Y'all see the one he posted today w/ the added horimono using a dremel tool (presumably)? It looks horrible. 114014317451