vjk

The saya is to an Ichihara Nagamitsu katana, and has the following painted or laquered on it: 194 Nen? Did they miss a digit somewhere? Does it have siginificance I'm not seeing? Any ideas?

Ahh, thank you! I didn't go far enough back into the "Mune" section to get to the next character. Edit: It looks like all four generations used the same Mei. Hawley's mentions that the first two worked in suguha; I'm pretty sure mine is gunome, so a good indication for third or fourth generation, I guess: 1644-1688 then.

Thank you all for the responses. Any info on the smith? Hawley's list a Bungo Muneyuki, but with a different character for Mune. The Nihon-to Koza shinto book merely mentions that there were smiths with that name. Google was no help. Searching the smith database, I get three hits, the second of which (Muneyuki III [is that sandai?]) has an exact match for this mei, except that the kanji for "Mune" is missing for some reason. That smith was kicking around Shoho, 1644. As for the blade itself, I seem to buy with the eye and heart. I love this little guy. It's a smallish Wakizashi (nagasa 43.8cm, or approximately 17 1/4") with a deepish sori (15mm), and - to my eye - an elegant sugata. Edit: here's a (terrible) picture:

Can someone please help me with this mei? I think I have it all but one character. (click the image below for an ungodly huge version; I apologize for the quality of the image, Mr. Brockbank I am not) I believe that the mei is 豊州高田住藤原?行 which reads Hoshû Takada ju Fujiwara ?yuki. I can't make out the second-to-last character. Here is a slightly better view of it: I believe the left half of the character is 糸 and the right side appears to be a "hat" over a box over a "hammer": I've looked several places to try to find that character, with no luck. Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

How do you -- or do you -- insure your collections? I talked to my insurance agent about insuring the 4 blades I have currently, and he wants an appraisal of each blade before they will cover them. This seems problematic to me, although I understand where he's coming from. Do you know of anyone who could perform these appraisals? Or if not, is there an insurance company that is used to dealing with this?