Rivkin

Hamon is exactly periodic sinusoid with accented nioi-guchi which is visible everywhere at any angle. Most likely Showa (WWII) stuff with brutally cleaned nakago.

I don't know, its kind of two different worlds - people who place kinzogan and museums which drill numbers to make sure they don't get lost. The latter happens when a curator dies (its a lifelong appointment by default), they hire new one, next day he comes to department head and asks politely - where is the actual collection? Because the storage box is empty but there is a bunch of stuff without tags on dead curator's table. The next day, everything qualifying as portable-walkable Michelangelo gets a little number drilled on its ass. Or feet.

70% of swords in museums have either chiseled or permanent ink written catalogue number on them. Yes, Goto Teijo tsuba with white number across the plate.

Yeap, something strongly Mino related, probably early shinto.

I personally think putting kinzogan was always being a bit nonchalant with a historic item, but people actually do it today. The thinking is that if you want to box in NBTHK into giving you exactly what you want or failing the item completely, do nijimei kinzogan. On the border Yukimitsu/Taima - put in "Yukimitsu". It has been far less uncommon in the past 100 years than most think.

Not tosogu guy, but Aoi piece looks like Meiji period work or closeabout, not modern, not old. Fairly decent piece for the style.

99% of what you see in oshigata is arbitrary drawing. Blade's outline and nakago signature are supposed to be an honest imprint, but that's not what people who study oshigata are really interested in. At best you get a decent hamon outline. If you know school's work you can mentally reconstruct the jigane and the hamon, if you don't its probably confusing infinitely more than helping.

Quite possibly late Muromachi piece, ubu, unsigned - therefore not a great restoration investment.

Feels like some kind of Bizen blade but many pictures are needed to be more precise or certain of anything.

There is an issue that only handful (truly handful) of blades today have continuous history established prior to 1550. So if the name is older than that, whether its indeed the same blade or not is often unproveable. Sometimes it gets funnier - until Meiji it was one (or many) blades that were associated with the name, today its one - but its not obvious that the one selected for the role Meiji and later is actually the best fit...

I see... stormy night. Someone is.... looking at yahoo Japan... I see... package... its in white carton box... there is some writing on it... Tsunahiro attribution depends on who attributed it. NTHK might use it as a synonym for better class sue-Soshu, but generally its considered quite a good attribution for mumei blade... Could this blade be by Tsunahiro? Yes. Its probably from 1560-1580. That would be what, sandai? Nevertheless if you submit it to NBTHK its very likely will not be Tsunahiro. His best works have quite good jigane and also stayed rather true to nie when many were trying to do Soshu in ko nie or even nioi - and his nie execution is rather refined, whether its first second or third generation, at least compared to others. Here jigane is tired, though it was not bad it was not first rate, and the work why very shiny is not the first tier and hitatsura does not cover entire blade and its coarse in a way. You'll probably get like Shimada as attribution.

Surprisingly, any Bizen and Soshu name was seen worthy of gimei.

Late Muromachi or Kambun shinto are default attributions if its not Showa or shinshinto... Basically 90% of the remaining blades will fall into those categories. Sugata here is kind of generic. The nakago shape with its width, no sori... that existed for a long time and made its appearance now and then. Nakago ana is a bit off-circle. Its a good indicator its koto. Patina... I just dealt with Nambokucho tanto who had such patina. I've seen shinto blades with darker. So nothing conclusive, but early shinto-late Muromachi is within realistic. It has considerable ware all along the blade, it looks like masame is strong here... hamon has some hotsure, so most likely this is something in Yamato line. It does not have typical deep thin kaeri which we see on a lot of work like Owari. The only factor that remains is yasurime. And this one is a bit garbled, but it almost look higaki... or takanoha. Higaki or takanoha with earlier work would tent towards Yamato, with later towards Mino. If its not higaki, I would lean towards something like Bungo.

Makes my life harder because its not what I expected. Why these guys have to be like that... Its not enough to make any definitive judgement, unfortunately. But as a wild guess, end of Muromachi, early Edo. School... Bungo.

I generally find anti-Muromachi sentiment prominent among many collectors to be both understandable and strange. There was a ton of crap forged between 1500 and 1550, the kind of crap the jigane is so coarse it barely holds together. There are blades of true mastery - more during Oei to Onin, but some of Tensho work of almost zero level names was very-very impressive.