ZH1980

Thank you for this detailed response! Very helpful.

I’ve been working with Paul on a proxy tsuba shinsa and have found him very professional and responsive thus far.

It would be most helpful to me (and perhaps others) if you could expand on this comment a bit. What are the obvious signs that this blade is a Chinese knock off? It's obviously in very bad condition, but any additional information on why the blade appears fake would be appreciated. Thank you.

Sharing a papered daisho tsuba set from my collection. I suspect later Edo daisho tsuba are more common than the daisho blades you are discussing, but wanted to share nonetheless.

Just adding another contribution or two to this thread - one sukashi kiku tsuba and one later Edo 32 petal kiku tsuba.

A mid-Edo papered Akasaka tsuba; recently purchased.

The Mercari listing is showing as “Sold” now. Did you buy it?

Great point, John!

The price on Mercari is ¥35,100 ($225).

What concerns me ever-so-slightly about this tsuba is that the original seller/owner (on Mercari) has many tsubas for sale with modern hozon origami - many of which were issued on the same day by NBTHK. I could be wrong, but this has led me to believe that the seller himself submits his tsuba for evaluation with NBTHK. As this tsuba has the (far less desirable) old origami, it begs the question - at least in my mind - why the seller didn’t get updated Hozon origami for this tsuba. Could it be because he thought the tsuba wouldn’t pass Hozon evaluation? Maybe he did submit it for Hozon and the tsuba ultimately didn’t pass evaluation? Maybe I’m overthinking it …

I’m a little late to the party, but wanted to share this (fairly beaten up) example from my collection. I’ve always enjoyed its simplicity.

Reading old posts and came across this thread. Here is a fairly typical 16-petal chrysanthemum style tsuba from my collection. Happy New Year!

A beautiful piece indeed! I don’t have many in my collection, but I did recently buy this one - papered and attributed to Waki Goto.

Thanks Dale! Mine was courtesy of Aoi-Art. They have a collection of such beautiful pieces.

A Heian-jo Style tsuba from my collection.