nulldevice

It was a great show. I was able to work with Mike Y and find a wonderful first addition to my collection! There were swords ranging from $1000 to well over $500k for a few JuBi examples I saw. Every sword I inspected was in a perfect or very near perfect polish. This was a great time to really see excellent examples of some top smiths. Every dealer was incredibly willing to show swords well out of my budget. I didn’t go asking after the TJ or JuBi swords, but I handled many Juyo swords that were $50k+ including some amazing Rai and Norishige blades among others. Reading kanji names as Adam mentioned above was crucial. I don’t know all of the kanji names and provinces but knowing a little goes a very long way. Same goes with the paper levels and eras (Kamakura, Edo, etc.) The catalog swords were all over the price spectrum. I expected some of the catalog swords I was interested to all be out of my budget but surprisingly 2 of them were right at my budget level. One small thing, many of the Japanese only dealers have prices listed in JPY using man (10,000yen multiples) just something small to know. It was a wonderful show and I wished I could’ve spent the full 2 days there and taken advantage of the English events before and afterwards. I heard there were some excellent English sword study groups on Monday with top smith blades that I would’ve loved to attend but the wife was already gracious enough to spend 5 hours with me on Saturday!

Thanks @Nobody That is indeed the tachi on display. thanks to your link I found the “sword blade” that was shown to the public for the first time. Sword blade 35

Just a FYI that rarely are the mounts (koshirae) original to the sword. The wood and ray skin and other natural materials degrade over time. Real, old, collectible koshirae are their own set of serious collectors items and have their own grading papers to accompany them. id pass on this blade. The mune looks very badly chewed up with bit splits and there are lots of pits up and down the length of the blade. For that much money, I believe you could pick up a very nice koto blade with no flaws or defects without too much trouble.

While in Nara today, we visited the Nara National Musuem where they are doing their Shōsō-in (Nara Treasure Vault) exhibit. They had 2 swords on display, a “tachi” and a “sword blade”. Unfortunately photos were expressly forbidden for these 2 swords and they were being vigilant about that rule on these and other exhibits. I wasn’t able to get pictures. The “sword blade” shown was on display for the first time ever since it went into the vault in the 9th century. I can’t find any pictures about either of these swords on any of the Shoso-in pages. I’ll try to paint a picture the best I can with my newbie skills. Both the tachi and the sword blade were straight swords and were incredibly thick with super low shinogi or yokote. They had a flat back (kaku-mune) and were nearly 1cm thick. The lighting wasn’t good on the short sword blade but they both seems to have a mokume-hada type pattern and a chu-suguha hamon. The “kissaki” portion had a rounded fukura type shape but no yokote. I thought I could see some Utsuri on the tachi but the lighting was kind of dim and all of the Japanese people at the museum (our small group of 3 were the only non-Japanese there) were all looking at me funky crouching down low trying to get the right angle to see if utsuri was present! The last major thing I noticed was that the nakago on both blades had a hamachi and munemachi that were nearly 1cm. The mihaba on both blades was ~4cm+ by my estimations through the glass. The taper was also very minor and both blades were still ~3cm at the end at the sakihaba. I was able to get pictures of some wonderful Buddhist carvings and statues as well as some other ancient artifacts where photos were allowed but the big items (glass and gold plate, emperors armrest, and a mirror box) were prohibited and I didn’t want to disrespect these amazing artifacts. if anyone is near the Nara area before the 11th, I’d highly recommend the museum to see some swords that may never see the light of day again in our lives.

It seems that Walter Comptons personally owned collection is cycled through Jauce every few months if you believe the postings!

Honestly, I'm expecting that 99% of the swords there will be out of my reach. There are a few longer swords from the nanbokucho/kamakura era that are "only" TH that might be within grasp that are mumei so those are probably the ones I will focus on. I'll take photos and post them after the event and after I get back from Japan.

I'll only be there for 4-5 hours for one of the days. I'll be on a Japan trip with my wife and some friends and I was able to secure the 2nd to go to Tokyo and spend some time at the show.

This is a good read on the subject

There are a number of items on the list that have me very interested. The question is even at the TH or Juyo level how many of them are affordable (relative to what I'm ready to spend)? I'm trying to highlight which blades I'm most attracted to so I can try and get a look at them at DTI this year and see what their prices are. Should be a fun experience regardless.

I am planning on attending this year.

There was another one of these the other day with pictures referencing some of Compton’s books and a similar sayagaki. There seems to be many of these Compton masterpiece swords popping up recently with suspicious papers.

Looks like Takehisa to me 武久

Oof yeah, I've seen some replicas at the local mall store that look better than that

30

4 first 3 second as it’s a bigger blade and I like big nanbokucho blades 1 last