Rivkin

Thank you very much, that helps!

They are all from one collector. I've picked up couple of blades, and he rolled out quite a few okimono and netsuke...

This one is for ninja.

This one - less so I guess. but its signed...

This one does feel old.

Dutch? Mongol?

Thank you, I need to do better shots,

Looks cool though. Need to make better pictures when I can....

No idea what I bought... makes me feel like an average forum poster!

Took the plunge without knowing anything about the subject. Because why read books?

Its one of the things which are very hard to value. The carving is relatively modern. Probably no earlier than shinshinto. I like it, I find it attractive, but many will have issues with the execution. Its out of polish. It has butchered nakago and nonsense signature.

Every established collecting community with items at high level has either individual or collective appraisals. With top tier paintings there are institutes dedicated to specific artists or schools and you are expected to submit a painting for their consideration, unless its already well known and published. Sometimes there is an alternative when there is an individual who publishes catalogue raisonne than you send the painting to him and he writes back description and whether it will be included in the next edition. Until 1960s museums in general offered opinions to anyone inquiring, now its considered unethical to do so because museums are trying to separate themselves from the unclean world of money and also avoid any controversies. There are countries like Russia, to lesser extent China, and many others in Asia where there is a government certified expertise in regards to any "weapon" that might have cultural or historic value. Overall estimation and valuation is approached with far lesser hesitation in Asia compared to Europe. There is no concept of "equality" but rather you are always facing your grades, class standing, achievements being publicly catalogued and displayed. People are very forward about perceiving themselves as X seat in their profession. If someone says "I am 45th grandmaster in chess" he is from Asia. Other people sometimes say "I am top three" or "top five", but everything below is vague and flexible. In Asia assigning levels to any work, including artwork, is very natural by comparison, and constantly submitting pieces for appraisal is a norm. If you a "writer" it means you got 1st prize in at least two of first or second tier competitions. Otherwise you are just a person who writes as a hobby.

I don't really kantei shinto well, so all is basically a guess why it could be shinto. Its a bit heavy for its nagasa, which might be a hint to shinto, but it does look like a heavy type of blade. We've seen substantially more Owari NBTHK judgements recently for anything that includes a wide suguha. Famous story TJ Go who've been Owari for a long time until it got TH Go and then it was a smooth sailing forward. Roundish-well-defined gunome can also be seen as Owari-shinto trait. There is a tendency to go shinto if jigane is zanguri with mokume elements, which one sometimes sees in Owari though not as often as in Kunihiro-Kunimichi.

I would guess its a type of hamon popularized I guess by Tatara Nagayuki around Kambun. Quite likely from the same period or slightly later.

Many Asian countries have zero weapon ownership tolerance and therefore have goveenment certified “experts" providing expertise and assigning status such as indigenous art, cultural property, cultural treasure etc.. Juyo and TJ are natural analogues of government rankings, which are also common in Asia. To the point that S ranked item has to have at least that many hotels next to museum housing it etc etc. Japanese system is probably not the most formal in the region by many metrics.