Adrian

Jeez, I feel flattered since I had a chat with Tsuruta san (at my own initiative ) some 2 days after Stu bought it This is why I was asking him when did he bought it .

Alex, I know what you mean but I hope you'll agree with me that by using shill bidding for this purpose you're no longer trying to sell the item for a fair price to an informed customer. Even so, ebay could allow the seller the option to set up a "hidden reserve" or something like that. Anything would be better then allowing the seller to see the maximum bid entered by the high bidder...

The October Tokyo show is what I have in mind Still a long way to go, at this point I'm trying to make sure that I have a reason to be there (except for feasting the eyes of course )

Thank you Mike. Are there any restriction for foreigners in regard of attending and purchasing at Japanese sword shows?

I think the problem here is that the rules are not made to be fair to both sellers and buyers, but to profit ebay as much as possible. All they need to do is to make the maximum bid amount invisible to the seller. Then no one will be willing to do shill bidding past the price they consider fair. End of story. Of course this isn't going to happen for the reason mentioned above. P.S. Back when I registered on ebay in 1999, the reserve price was much cheaper then today...

I may have the opportunity to visit Japan on a relatively long business trip (3 weeks) and I'm considering a visit to a sword show. I understand that the export permits take a while and without them taking the sword away with you is illegal. Is this correct or there are any legal workarounds for foreigners? (as opposed to Japanese sword shops) Also are you allowed as a foreigner to buy at these shows? thanks a lot.

A coin always has two sides and I perfectly understand Alex's point. However the big problem here is the ebay system itself: by allowing the seller to see the maximum amount entered by the current high bidder they basically allow sellers to raise the price to the maximum (and sometimes well above the "reasonable" level ) by using shill bidding. I suspect they are turning the blind eye on this widespread practice because higher selling prices mean higher fees. However there's an easy way to avoid having this kind of stunt being pulled on you and Mariusz just described it. I prefer to be my own sniping service since it's free :D but it requires a fast internet connection and sometimes a ring from the alarm clock at weird hours :lol:

Stu, out of curiosity, when did you purchased it?

Roy, what tool are you using to cut the round shapes?

This is a very simple template that I found on the internet. It's 1:1 scale but of course it has to be adjusted for the thickness of the material. I'm sure that if Roy could make some templates many of us would be grateful katanakake.pdf

When it comes to nihonto/tosogu Ebay is like the adult industry, everyone despises it yet it has innumerable customers

Done. But IMO discussing such scams might help others avoid being scammed, not sure that turning the head to the other direction is the right thing to do.

That's confidential, unless Grey wants to share it. Anyway, back to the Tosogu part, I was wondering if any of the experienced Tosogu collectors cares to comment on my interpretation of the scenes depicted on the fittings?

Mark, that's pretty much how I also see this. All things considered I'm very pleased with my first purchase, particularly considering the very tight budget.

Yup, if he wired the money it's all over. Very silly thing to do in a transaction like this, but apparently many people get their judgement clouded when a deal looks very good (and it's actually too good to be true)...

Actually it would be worth investigating the payment methods that the scammer accepts. He may be using the real name of one of his accomplices in order to receive the funds using a method that doesn't look suspicious to the victims.

Romulus Bostan is definitely a Romanian name. What was the nationality of your old fraud guy? Can you please post a link to the Craigslist ad? Apparently there are a lot of phone numbers listed for this guy in Denmark probably one of the Danish members could tell us if those are anonymous prepaid SIM's :lol:

Got it John I found another Goto schook ko-tsuka discussed here on the forum http://www.nihontomessageboard.com/nmb/ ... 00b8476708 Looks very similar with yours in style while being (IMO) a bit lesser in general quality of the workmanship. Can you please post a better photo of your Goto Sekijo ko-tsuka?

It's a small world and google makes it even smaller. While the signature on mine is definitely gimei there are some similarities in the two pieces. For example the background on both is realised in a very similar manner (at least that's how it appears in the low res photo that I found . Maybe same family but master (yours) and one of the students (mine)? P.S. This is the website where I found it http://www.shibuiswords.com/goto-ryu.htm

Thank you John. I found this one with a quick search (also papered) and while the mei bears some (not that much tho ) resemblance with mine, the kai is very different. Yours looks close to this one? Also the mine seems weak (tbh that's why I said "probably gimei" in the post where I presented it). The kanji on this one look much stronger.

Well, I think I identified exactly the events depicted on the fuchi, kashira and kotsuka, even the names of the characters It's an episode from "The Tale of the Heike" called Ujigawa and described here in detail: http://www.glopac.org/Jparc/HEIKYOKU/1ujigawa.html (I think there's a small error here, as the enemy forces were actually those of Minamoto no Yoshinaka ) The description of the defensive works matches exactly the images on the kotsuka and fuchi: We can clearly see the stakes driven in the riverbed and the branch barricades tied to them. On the kotsuka we see both samurai racing to the river and entering it while facing the floating barricade. Now I need to do some further reading and figure out the tsuba. Update 1: found a much more reliable source - the complete translated text of he Heike Monogatari : http://library.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/re ... -whole.pdf Update 2: I think I figured out the tsuba too. It's the subsequent phase of the same battle, when the forces of Yoshitsune have crossed the river and engaged the enemy guarding the remains of the bridge:

About the white gloves, I had to use them because my hands were sweating after opening the PVC tube by round-cutting it trough the top of the cap :D Detailed pics of the blade as promised:

Eh, it's not that bad but it has some shintetsu and it's a very common type produced in large quantities. I'll post more detailed photos a bit later (say 45 mins :D )

Thank you Geraint. Indeed the fuchi-kashira set is better worked then the kotsuka, but to me they look like they belong to the same set. The tsuba is definitely lower quality (and shows a lot of use) and probably the same can be said about the menuki (tho one clearly has some damage which makes it look bad and the other is pretty much hidden). However the tsuba looks like it describes a naval battle as Jean said. But for the fuchi-kashira set (and probably the menuki too) the race across the Uji river seems a better bet. Could be that the tsuba depicts the defense of the bridge over the Uji river by the Yorimasa and the Miidera monks against the army of the Taira clan? This would mean that the tsuba depicts an event from the first battle of Uji (1180) and the rest of the fittings depict events from the second battle of Uji (1184, fought between two Minamoto factions. Which wouldn't make much sense unless the tsuba belonged originally to another koshirae. I don't know of any bridge fight during the second Uji battle (which would put everything together in a nice manner) but of course I'm far from being knowledgeable in Japanese samurai tales or history.

This one is a bit edited on the whitepoint and contrast since the flash fried it (the colors are off) Same here, what you see on my hand is actually a white cotton glove: As seen here: