Adrian

You're correct about this kind of fakes, but I wasn't talking about flea market grade copies. These will always be easy to spot not only by experienced nihonto collectors but also by people who have good general knowledge in antiquities and have minimal nihonto knowledge.

This pretty much nails it. If they were to make a perfect replica the cost to make it (working hours of a skilled smith plus materials plus working hours of a skilled polisher and so on) would be way too high.

One more vote for Grey, a honest dealer with good communication. A pleasure to deal with him.

Or creates a bogus ebay account, use it to do BIN and then gives it negative feedback with the main account for not paying the item.

You can always invent the next beer can or something like that that would instantly make you a billionaire. :D You cannot compare an event like 9.11 with the pathetic bickering that goes on these days in Washington. Both sides are just bluffing and they know it. (as does pretty much everyone else). If anything, these events will just drag more international buyers to the auction (guys somehow hoping that some American buyers will be a bit more cautious).

Great link Henry, thanks for sharing. P.S. Perhaps the title can be edited into a more explicit version.

I'd rather not spin off Jean's topic, if you don't mind. You could always open a topic about purchasing on ebay, if we are to discuss the various do and don't.

Interesting topic and very useful common sense advice for beginners. Just to make things clear Jean, when you say "starting Muromachi" you mean "including Muromachi", right? P.S. I wouldn't say that only nihonto experts can buy from ebay, Under the right circumstances even nihonto newbies can score on ebay, if they have good knowledge of the ebay mechanisms and understand where the true bargains have a (slim) chance to appear. However, if looking to bid on a nihonto item sold by an established ebay seller, you better be an expert (or get help from a real and honest expert).

From what I gather this "masterpiece" should be released in December, close to Christmas. A good time to avoid the cinemas I suppose :D .

Probably the host is blocking the traffic coming from certain locations. Btw, nice swords :D

Also this topic on a similar subject is well worth reading http://www.nihontomessageboard.com/nmb/ ... f=2&t=2155 John posted there some fine examples of shakudo Hikone-bori tsuba.

I must confess that, to my untrained eye, the composition and the craftmanship of this one looks WAY better then those of the tsuba discussed in this topic. Particularly the composition.

Just one more thing to add: always ask the ebay seller if he would guarantee that the sword doesn't have fatal flaws (as in money back guarantee). If you don't get any answer or if the seller claims to have no in-depth knowledge but the listing and the account history seem to suggest otherwise simply forget about it. If the sword seems to have at least an old polish, the seller seems to know what he's doing but the answer is "sold as is because bla-bla" simply forget about it. If the sword is in rough condition (basement find) AND the seller doesn't seem (from the listing, account history and so on) to have nihonto knowledge AND if you feel like gambling, just keep in mind that you may actually have a chance to find a real bargain but the odds are still VERY slim. But hey, it's your money :D

Actually it was 5-7$ for handling plus shipping via postal service at actual shipping cost, as clearly stated more then one time. Shipping in bulk for some major destinations like the US, of course. So now you're suggesting that I wasn't going to take off with everyone's money (which would have kinda' hard with me paying for everything up front :lol: ) but I was going to print many more copies ans sell them for my own profit ( to which customers? we can't get so far 100 orders, remember? :lol: ) As for the 1500$ for long term storage in PROPER book deposit plus provision for blocked money, I'm sure you'll find out soon enough that the figure was actually a modest one. Seriously, all this is 'good old boys' attitude at it's best. I honestly think you're a better man then this...

Seriously Brian, how did you come up with the idea that I was playing the victim? :lol: I don't want the project to be the victim, and that's a very different thing. For the rest, it's really low to suggest that I was increasing the price 'for my efforts' when actually the small price increase was meant to cover for the long term storage of the unsold copies and for a part of the blocked money, as clearly explained at the time. Trust me that I appreciate your effort, especially since I have a VERY clear picture of the whole work required by this project. I only started to question what's going on when I saw 1. The price increase and 2. the discussion about digital print surfacing again

Brian, I think you forgot what we discussed not so long ago. The significant post was this one: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=15495&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=60 To be equally blunt, I was willing to do the whole thing with my own money in front, at a very slight cost increase, just to cut the crap about "who are you and why are you doing this". Then you came with what appeared to definitely be a cheaper solution and since I wasn't in for a profit I had no reason to do anything but to step down and let you handle the whole thing. Problem is this happened on April 29th and here we are on July 6th talking again about digital print and how difficult is to do the volunteer work required for this project. I don't want to hurt your feelings in any way (seriously) so I'm choosing my words very carefully but tbh the last thing that you should worry at this point is my person, as my window of opportunity to carry on this project is long gone. Not because I'm sunbathing on a Greek island right now, but because I'm damn sure I'm not going to start over the negotiations to the last penny with a lot of people just to have someone come up with a miraculous offer for US printing. Which is better in both price and number of copies then the best offer I was able to find in 3 Eastern European countries, but, what do you know, cannot be used because we waste month after month talking about how hard is to find a shipping company and how difficult is to get 150 orders when we actually just need 100 and we can recycle the rest of the books if no one would have them.

I'm not surprised by anything since I had everything lined up nice and pretty when I proposed to do this with my own money and then sell the books at 115$/copy plus packing and postage. Then Brian found this offer from a US based printing company, which was clearly cheaper then what I was able to find, so it was really a no brainer to pick this one. Of course now we're lacking a volunteer to handle the whole thing but hopefully someone will step up. To start at this stage to talk again about digital print is just weird.

I am the above mentioned someone. :D Seriously guys, just go at a book show and check out some digital printed books, then compare them to good quality offset printed books. I don't really need to say more, just use your own eyes. IMO digital printing did improved vastly over the last few years, but is still a long way from good quality offset printing. Now let's consider the status of this limited edition as a collector's item. Is it worth settling for a lower quality? Particularly considering the fact that top quality could be had for a VERY reasonable price? It would be a shame to give up on logistic issues and settle for a lower quality on what is definitely going to be a one time enterprise. The point is that large printing companies won't touch such a tiny order in offset. And small printing companies that would do such order cannot handle fulfillment. I said this from the beginning, I guess you agree with me by now .

OR what we need is 150 people actually sending in the money :D Then everything will be much easier. One option to explore is to ask Markus if he would accept at least a part of the royalties in books (calculated at printing cost, of course). This is sometimes done even with larger editions, but of course we have to consider that this is a very small market so it would take time to sell those copies. P.S. Anyway, I see that Brian figured out that no printing company would touch shipping, I remember that not so long ago there I was being told with great authority that this is possible and so on :D O tempora...

That makes sense, unless we manage to pre-sell all 150 copies. I know it sounds over-optimistic at this point, but yet again the whole project was considered a bit far-fetched not so long ago :D

I know that post Brian, but I see that we're voting here for $100+shippin per set. The relevant part was this one: However there were some more messages that pretty much gave the impression that the final price will be 85$ plus shipping. There were at least 3 people who agreed with Barry right after this post. No problem if it got up to 100$/set, but if not you may want to edit this poll and put 85$/set. Someone who wants to buy 4 sets at $100 may change his vote to 5 sets and so on

I had no problem casting my vote for 2 copies using the dubious internet found in the nice greek island called Chios :lol: Btw, I was under the impression that the offer that Brian got from the US ammounted to $85 per copy including Markus' royalties. Did it went up to the original $100 per copy while I was working my way trough most of Greece? :D

IMO those two months are more then enough to collect the money. Keep in mind that this edition is going to be a) very limited b) of excelent quality and c) EXTREMELY cheap I'd rather try to do something and fail (with 0 consequences, just the money gets refunded) then do absolutelly nothing because of the fear to fail.

Brian, the catch is that since we need a middleman to set up a kickstarter account for Markus, the middleman will need to handle payments to the printing company and so on. And Paypal is 4%, not 10% like kickstarter. I don't think anyone is in a hurry, but the comitment rate is likelly to drop if the project drags it's feet for one year or so. It's just human nature. My proposal is simple: if someone steps forward as a US based middleman and if his credibility is beyond doubt, let's just start sending in the damn money and get the thing moving. It's not that hard... If not enough people send money, all he has to do is send Paypal refunds. I really don't see the flaw in this approach. Of course, IF we cannot find a US based middleman, we could discuss other options. (kickstarter with UK based middleman for example)

Actually kickstarter is useless and redundand because Markus is not a US or UK resident so we would need a middleman to set up the kickstarter account anyway.