Adrian

http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/6601093 I tknow odachi were supposed to be at least 3 shaku long but this seems waaay past that. I'm wondering what this could be? Doesn't look like it ever had any practical purpose, unless the guy looking at it is a very short midget. For comparison, a sword said to have belonged to Frisian pirate/freedom fighter Grutte Pier (a guy said to have been 7' tall - about the height of a tall basketball center of these days) is preserved at Leeuwarden. http://www.swordforum.com/forums/showth ... rutte-Pier It is 2.13m long (exactly the claimed height of Grutte Pier) and weights 6.6kg. Obviously for a guy who was probably well above 2m tall (7' may be an exaggeration but not by much, as all sources describe him as being of superhuman height and strength) such a sword made sense back in the days when zweihänder swords were in use. However the nihonto in this pic looks even longer when mounted and I doubt that in medieval Japan you could find people who were 2+ meters tall and well built.

I know a guy who is a football commentator and some years ago (like 15 or so) had to cover a match at Bastia. He described it as a near death experience, as security was virtually non-existent and the local fans were making cut throat signs towards the commentator booth just before they started to jump on it and kick it's door The guy isn't exactly the bravest person I've ever met, but I can imagine that at least a good beating was coming towards him if Bastia didn't managed to win the match. And this was a match in an European Cup, the type of event where fans usually don't want to appear as wild animals. (except for some Liverpool hooligans, of course)

Probably, but since I don't live within their reach, not have any plans to visit the island in the near future... :lol: Anyway, regarding vendetta, I think there's little doubt that this is a custom strongly related with the Italian origin of Corsica's inhabitants. (let's face it, if someone was to run DNA tests (which isn't going to happen, due to the above mentioned FLNC ) probably less then 5% of the current inhabitants of Corsica would have anything to do with the population that inhabited the island in Roman times).

Jean, I'm not falling in any wikipedia trap The historical facts about Corsican history cannot be denied or changed at gunpoint :lol: P.S. I added above the relevant bit about the Corsican vernacular language before seeing that you already posted a reply.

Jean, Corsica was part of the Republic of Genoa from 1347 to 1729 and from 1729 to 1769 (when it was conquered by France) was an independent state. It's constitution was written in Italian, which was the official language of the state. Not to mention that the Corsican vernacular language is very close to Italian too. So I guess that vendetta can be considered an Italian custom after all. (not that it's a tradition that states should fight over :D )

You also need to be in the right country :lol: It' useless to find a bargain with a low BIN price only to discover that the seller set "US only" shipping and the item is gone long before you have the chance to talk him into overseas shipping via ebay messages. Or to contact a US based friend, ask him to receive a package and so on. From my experience, sellers that are experienced enough to offer international shipping are much less likely to allow real bargains to slip trough their fingers, so to speak. Exceptions appear usually when a seller with vast experience in one domain acquires (and sells) an item which is completely unrelated to his field of expertise. I once scored two Iridium marine units for 50$ each from a guy who was selling a huge amount of computer related stuff. They both had blown fuses and turned out to be fully functional once the fuse was replaced. At that time their value was about 7-800$ each, sold fast. The guy had no clue that these had automotive type fuses inside and probably thought they were fried.

This topic is an awesome idea, and I don't say this too often :D Should be VERY useful to a lot of people on the long run. Maybe those who are also interested in selling their "orphan" menuki should be allowed to mention this (and perhaps a price, but only if they chose to) when they post? This seems like a good place to tolerate the "make me an offer" approach :D

Congrats on the find Chris, you made yourself a nice Christmas present. :D I guess you found the listing almost instantly after it was posted, otherwise I'm not sure how long would such a lot last on Ebay with a low BIN. TBH I think you gambled a bit by submitting a best offer, since while waiting for the seller to take action someone else (with much less knowledge) could have bought it for the BIN price.

I would also be interested in hearing Stephen's opinion on this sword.

Only if the site was made by Nostradamus' grand-grand-nephew

Henk-Jan, I was talking about carvings and graffiti made by Romans on the walls of Egyptian temples not on "ancient Roman walls". If a team of learned men was to figure out a "Caesar+Cleo=Love" carving at Karnak and attest it to Julius Caesar, such discovery would make headlines around the world and that piece of wall would instantly become national treasure for Egypt. So I'm not really sure what your point is, other then contradicting me :lol: I pretty much agree with Nick about the fact that a fake signature added a few centuries ago is now a part of the blade's history. And provided a similar example from a different field of historical research (the carvings of Roman soldiers, merchants, administrators and even tourists made on the walls of much older Egyptian temples).

No one is attempting to remove the Roman carvings and graffiti present on the walls and columns of various Egyptian temples Even if these were pure vandalism 2000 years ago. As a matter of fact, they are an interesting research domain on their own.

Can this be a broken katana turned into a wakizashi?

Congrats on such find :D

I know, but even this is a matter of perspective. For some people starving in Somalia, a nice supply of Monsanto crap would be a God given gift. Of course this doesn't mean we should accept all the crap that the food producers want to push down our throats. TBH I think that everyone should eat as healthy as they can afford. Back to choji oil, I guess that it wasn't too bad for nihonto for quite a few hundred years (in some cases closer to a thousand then to 500).

Henk-Jan, I think pretty much any food is deadly on the long term. We all have to eat until we die :lol:

They locked the CHF to the Euro a few years ago, so the trend isn't going to continue.

Nice to see there are other people here who have a numismatic background :D The coin discussed here is called a Dukaton (and sometimes a "silver rider") and as far as I know was worth 60 to 63 stuivers. Indeed the piece use for the tsuba was minted in the province of Zeeland. Here is a similar piece in a decent condition: http://sincona.bidinside.com/en/lot/697 ... nte-1028-/ What I find interesting is the use of high quality silver for a tsuba. These coins are very soft and can be easily cut, therefore it's obvious that the person who ordered this tsuba had very little to no perspective to use his sword.

Spot on I'm sure many members will be happy to meet Lucy and her husband (in person, as opposed to online) at a show and offer some help in finding a suitable purchase.

My 2p say that the veteran mentioned on ebay never had anything but a broken sword.

Great report Barry :D . I really wanted to visit Japan during DTI this year (almost bought the airplane tickets trough KLM when they had a great offer) but it just wasn't possible to get my and my wife's schedules in line with such trip.

Pretty much any antiques dealer who accepts to put things on hold will expect payment within a specific time limit. Things may be different from dealer to dealer and a well known customer may get a much longer time limit then a new one, but I find it hard to believe that the mail from Aoi didn't mentioned a time limit for holding the sword. Anyway, when purchasing an item that is not exactly cheap, it doesn't hurt to spend a few pennies on a phone call and figure out the details if email communication is slow.

+1. Look at the shape that would have been obtained, I think it's quite obvious this was a shortening attempt, abandoned for unknown reasons.

Well, I'd say that even the most recent beginner should be able to figure out that the sword has a mei and the paper is for a mumei blade, or any other obvious mismatch. :lol: However, if the seller manages to pair a sword with a paper issued for a very similar but still different sword, the situation changes dramatically. Particularly if no mei is involved, the nagako looks similar, the sword belongs to the same school (or even worse, the same smith) and so on. But I suppose such situations should be quite rare. What is really sad is that these papers got separated from the swords they belong to. Someone went trough the whole shinsa process and paid a good amount of money to have a sword papered, yet idiotic heirs separated the sword from the paper and the paper ended up selling for next to nothing on ebay. Probably a lesson about storing paper(s) together with the respective sword...

Glad to see the project is still alive. To be honest, at a point I thought you just wanted to bury it, but this is a matter where I love to be proven wrong. Regarding paper, the worst possible idea would be to go cheap just to save a few bucks, particularly on a book of this size. The cost of paper isn't that big. At the very least I would go for #73 and my personal choice would be #81 or 85 (85 being 120g per square meter, if I got the conversion right, as I'm only used to the metric system in this particular field). Regarding shipping to Europe, when I purchased Nagayama's Connoisseur from a large online bookstore based in UK, the book actually came from their deposit in Sweden and the shipping cost was next to nothing ( 1.7 sterling pounds if I remember correctly - and the book is quite heavy) . Unfortunately I don't remember if the shipment originated from the Swedish national post or another carrier, but maybe if we have a Swedish member he could bring some light to the matter. If the above mentioned price wasn't part of a high volume deal, but is the usual price for shipping books from Sweden within the EU, perhaps it's worth investigating this possibility (freight shipping to Sweden to a shipping company and then individual shipping to the Eu based members who order the book).