DirkO

I thought "Yokoyama Kozuke Daijo Fujiwara Sukesada" was not that common, but the other Sukesadas were ?

he sold the set as well last week, got sniped at the very last second Lot of nice books for sale on eBay at the moment, at very reasonable prices (I even saw a 1st edition of Sun Tzu's - not exactly cheap )

This article was written not that long after the Meiji restoration and I thought it interesting to read that even in a time of turmoil, swords were still kept in the highest regards, the romance vanished for the largest part, but still some of it remained. That being said, I would welcome a Masamune or Muramasa blade for 1000$ :D

Hmmm seeing you need a special permit to export real authentic Japanese swords from Japan and seeing the fact you need a registration form in Japan to own a sword and to prove it is first art and not a weapon, I'm guessing your chances are slim. The Japanese regard all edged blades as weapons, so I think you're gonna have a real struggle importing a (68" !!!!) replica which has been sharpened... Just my thoughts though, maybe someone more knowledgeable of these facts might provide you with some better info...

Thx for uploading it

I use this book. I thought it to be handy because they have 3 different indexes and they tell you the stroke-writing-order, which comes in handy sometimes :-)

Les goûts et les couleurs se ne discutent pas LOL I seriously need to brush up my French !!! So many typos and errors in one sentence : unforgiveable ! :x

I thought they said : des gouts et des couleurs se ne disputent pas :lol:

Hi, I came across this Naotane, Sai-jo Saku: http://www.e-sword.jp/sale/0710_3031syousai.htm Now this item, beautiful in it's own right, brings up some questions in me (I can only read some very basic Japanese, so it could be that the explanation is right there on the site): 1) Why did a swordsmith make something like that ? Was it because the swordbusiness was slow and he wanted to try his hand at something else ? Was it perhaps made as a gift ? Or a custom order by a wealthy businessman ? 2) Why did it receive kantei-sho ? I mean, it has nothing to do with a nihon-to per se. I know swordfittings also receive kantei-sho, but this is some way out. 3) Why was there a koshirae created for this flowercutting tool ? Sorry for all the questions, but this item really has me puzzled (it doesn't take much to puzzle me ). I think it's a great curiosum and would love to buy something like this. Swordcollecting is all about finding out the story behind the sword and I think this could be a really nice one. Alas, my funds are kind of strapped at the moment

Steve, I'm one of his many happy customers and I must agree that his flashcards help a lot !!!

Would it be possible to get a sharp close-up of the inside of the rim ? Akasaka work can be recognized by their obvious layered work.

Hmmm maybe this is misguided, but wouldn't the following happen : Sellers can't flog their stuff because there are less buyers with extra cash out there => The ones that do have some extra cash get good deals, coz the sellers will inevitably lower their prices and start to work with smaller margins ?

most hamontraits have a certain practical aspect as well. Ashi make it more resilient, and so on. But what would this kind of hamon add in practicallity ?

Sa school was active in Chikuzen province (more info here : http://www.nihonto.com/abtartchikuzensa.html) whereas Mutsu no Kami Kaneyasu worked in the Tegai tradition (Yamato). That should get you started on your quest for more info There's no fun in it if it's all handed to you on a silver platter :lol:

What did he mean by "I think this will be worth 2 to 3" ? Thousands of dollars ?

Shan, I, for one, have never had troubles with PayPal and even now, this scam-attempt has nothing to do with PayPal an se. I am wondering however how the fraudster knew that I won the auction and how he got hold of my email address. (usually it's something like x***y) I guess this can be done by sniffing the traffic towards the ebay servers. My winning bid came through justsnipe.com, and maybe their traffic isn't fully encrypted ? The password will be encrypted with RSA at least, but maybe the userID is sent in cleartext. Once you have a userID, it's pretty easy. I don't know for sure, but it is worrying nonetheless. But never mind me rambling on here ! The important lesson to take home is : BE CAREFULL WHEN BUYING THROUGH THE INTERNET !!!

IP tracks back to NY, USA - and the reply-address is 38c44a90811110039t6f98c2e1t1af457901e98 ... .gmail.com So obviously bogus ...

Hi, I recently won an Ebay-auction of fwic2803 (Mitsuhiro-san). After which I started receiving mails from sales@auctiva-corporation.com. This person said he was fwic2803 and that his PayPal account was having problems, so I needed to send the payment in another way. Seeing these mails were sent to me directly I started to suspect him. Even more so when he said I only had 24 hours before making the payment, otherwise the sale would fall through. I then sent a mail through the ebay-messaging system, asking fwic2803 to verify. He said there were no problems with his paypal-account and that my payment had gone through. I asked him to report this to Ebay and sent him the mails I received from our fraudster. I did a quick WhoIs on the domain name found something very interesting and clever. The technical contact can't be reached by email seeing it's a bot. You have to a member of the domain's site to submit a help request, so there's no way for an outsider to reach them. Probably this is een SMTP-spoofed email address, but still, it doesn't hurt to inform people and make some inquiries. So people, when buying through Ebay or any other auction-site, be very very carefull !!!

A while ago I saw a tessen made by Gassan Sadakazu : http://cgi.befr.ebay.be/Japanese-Samura ... dZViewItem Sometimes tessen were used as a conceiled weapon, so I guess it makes sense that the more sturdy pieces with which one could deliver a blow, were made by armourers or even nihonto smiths.

Jean, mon ami. You hit the nail right on the head. Too bad I explained it poorly Thanks for correcting me

OK, first of all, I didn't mean to offend anyone. Zénon's thought was just that people tend to rely too much on the papers whereas papers are just that - a piece of paper. I think I worded it very poorly in English now I reread it Sorry guys !!!!!

edited for being too dumb a comment, sorry if I should've insulted anyone !

lol I was looking for these 24/7 on ebay, but this must've missed my radar. Now I'm in doubt, seeing I have several items I want to buy, but only that much cash to spend

Ford, I'm one of those dreaded newbies. But please hear this little newby out! I started out a good 1,5 year ago, with the intent of buying a (now) obvious Chinese fake. Being curious, I stumbled upon this forum. I posted some pics and basically was burnt to the ground for them But I learnt from some of the replies (especially the reply of Jean springs to mind - that was the reply that won me over), and I decided to take it a lot more serious than what I was planning to. Now sometimes I have an idea about something. When I see and read the replies, from people who I think to be far more skilled at it than I am, I try and hold that newgained info up against my idea. Sometimes the info is brought in a gentle, subtle way, sometimes it's somewhat less discrete. But I still welcome all the info I get. I realize that a lot of that info is rechewed over and over again, but we all have to start out somewhere. So please don't stop lingering here, because there are a lot of us who do appreciate it !!!

I think we can put this to rest Thank you all for a vivid discussion and some very interesting findings