Christie's Sale 2004

[BIG]

Hi found the sale of IMPORTENT SWORDS from the museum of Japanese Sword Fittings with realised

prices... http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/print_sale.aspx?saleid=19523

 

Best Regards

[Ken-Hawaii]

Interesting, & some very big names. Too bad it's nearly 13 years old. The market has changed a lot since then. Thanks for posting.

 

Ken

 

[Vermithrax16]

Seems market was a little bit stronger back then.

[Curran]

Hi Peter,

 

I don't think that is a complete listing. I remember the sale quite well.

 

Lots of nice fittings in that sale. Wish i could track one or two of them down.

There was a Juyo tsuba I would very much like to have owned.

[BIG]

Here is the second sale 2005.... also big names...

 

http://www.christies.com.cn/LotFinder/print_sale.aspx?saleid=20000

 

Best Regards

[Darcy]

The sale has not been matched for quality and volume or a combination of the two since then. 

 

A lot of those blades are now Juyo (you can find them starting in Juyo 51 or 52) and Tokubetsu Juyo. I remember the Hasebe there and I remember it passing Tokuju after and kicking myself for not getting it. 

 

I bought two and would have been happy to buy more. I got two super healthy top class koto blades and prices may seem strong but that kind of thing costs money regardless of the paper. It's obvious where they were going to go. 

 

About strength of market, the upper third is far more rare than the bottom third. There is one Tokuju for every 13 Juyo and one Juyo for every 13 Hozon/TH. 

 

So that makes 1 out of 169 good blades worthy of passing Tokuju.

 

But if you look at the price, say pull $200k for a Tokuju and $20k for a Tokubetsu Hozon Omi Daijo that won't pass Juyo.

 

There's only a 10x discrepancy in the price.

 

This tells us that probably the swords on the mid to low side are overpriced in regards to the swords at the very top end. This means overall if the market is rational and becomes more efficient with time (more exposure to information to make good decisions with), that swords on the mid to low end should devalue compared to swords on the high end. 

 

I think there is a little of both, that swords on the mid to low end are overpriced but they are within budgets reachable by most people so this allows for a bit more emotion/love buying without thinking about consequences. Swords on the high end of the range, honestly compare them to rare or ultimate things in any other field (paintings, ceramics, sculptures, cars, watches, stamps, baseball cards, etc) and they are relatively cheap.

 

So over time the information is digested and prices adjust, especially with 25+ Japanese websites churning out the commercial grade stuff now vs. 18 years ago (where there were none). There is still no significant volume of top grade pieces though that can be spit into the market. Go to any dealer in Japan and say you want to buy a high class Soshu sword and they will ask if you want to look at Bizen. They just do not exist in any volume, there are less than 700 Juyo swords by the entire core of the Soshu tradition. This is not going to change significantly over time. Where I expect to see no end of the Chu-jo Shinto works appearing and going with the price slowly drifting down. 

 

Even if you isolate Juyo and Tokuju blades, within these sets there are clearly some elite blades and some that just barely cross the threshold. Papers are a handy way of trying to summarize just how elite something is but ultimately people judge this or need to judge it directly as papers are just a rule of thumb. And they support the bottom line, but don't say anything about the top line. Any particular Hozon blade could be better than any particular Tokuju blade.

[seattle1]

Hello Darcy:

 Good job in data mining on the NBTHK papering ladder and inferences drawn for the data. It is certainly a good thing for collectors to know that there are quality grades, hence price differences, other things equal, within a paper designation, to say nothing of the potential for blades with apparently low rankings at any given time to subsequently be assigned a higher level. I presume that holds also for the designations of other rating groups.

 I have been curious about a couple of determinants that might have an impact of judgments made about a sword during NBTHK processing.. The first relates to the rank order paradigm effect of the now classic Fujishiro ratings that every student knows about and that must still pervade in the Japanese sword world. We all know that a smith who Fujishiro ranks Saijo saku is likely to paper higher and be worth more than say a Chu (n) Jo saku. Do you think that is a first approximation staring point, entirely disregarded, or for which there is some other rule of thumb standard?

 Second, and perhaps more importantly, how critical is the presence of a mei? It is sort of apples and oranges as, to take an extreme example, there are no signed Masamune of daito length, but for many other top smiths, both signed ubu examples and suriage mu mei will receive very high designations. There will also be a scattering of ubu mu mei which complicates any such comparison. Simply put, what is the weight of the presence of a mei  judged to be genuine? As an extension from this issue we all have heard of very convincing and deceptive utsushi done of old famous name smiths by otherwise more or less unemployed early Meiji smiths. I suppose some went unmasked for a while and wonder what eventually tripped them up: did the jigane/jihada/yakiba finally give them away or was the mei ultimately seen as unconvincing?

 Anyone's views would be welcome.

 Arnold F.

[Katsujinken]

Darcy has written about this extensively, so I look forward to him chiming in.

 

But I will add that the older a sword is, the higher it can paper when mumei. Darcy has stats, I am sure.

 

Important to remember that once you're into koto, the attribution on a mumei blade is as much a metaphorical statement of relative quality based on our judgment of the smith/school as it is a declarative statement of what person forged it X00 years ago. E.g. Imagine an attribution of Kaneuji vs. Yamato Shizu, etc. In the past there are attributions on well known top quality blades that have changed. Again, Darcy has loads of data and anecdotes around this exact issue.

[Vermithrax16]

I have zero knowledge about a Christie's auction, but seems their estimates were very low as to where many of the swords sold.

[BIG]

Curran, don't find the fittings sale. May be Rockefeller collection?

 

http://www.christies.com/presscenter/pdf/03082005/03082005b.pdf

 

On the other hand, a longtime collector told me, there is no need for higher papers when the NBTHK gives a Hozon and you saw the quality of the blade.

 

Best Regards

[Curran]

Hi Peter,

 

Museum of Japanese Sword Fittings Sale   ==> The name sort of supports the idea some fittings were sold.

 

I was teasing. I have the books and results here on the shelves. I have not looked at them in a long time. I believe I placed a few bids.

Your lists represent only a portion of the sale.

[PNSSHOGUN]

If anything this shows how stable exceptional blades have stayed in price over the years, and dare I say centuries.

[Darcy]

 

 I have been curious about a couple of determinants that might have an impact of judgments made about a sword during NBTHK processing.. The first relates to the rank order paradigm effect of the now classic Fujishiro ratings that every student knows about and that must still pervade in the Japanese sword world. We all know that a smith who Fujishiro ranks Saijo saku is likely to paper higher and be worth more than say a Chu (n) Jo saku. Do you think that is a first approximation staring point, entirely disregarded, or for which there is some other rule of thumb standard?

 

 Second, and perhaps more importantly, how critical is the presence of a mei? It is sort of apples and oranges as, to take an extreme example, there are no signed Masamune of daito length, but for many other top smiths, both signed ubu examples and suriage mu mei will receive very high designations. There will also be a scattering of ubu mu mei which complicates any such comparison. Simply put, what is the weight of the presence of a mei  judged to be genuine? As an extension from this issue we all have heard of very convincing and deceptive utsushi done of old famous name smiths by otherwise more or less unemployed early Meiji smiths. I suppose some went unmasked for a while and wonder what eventually tripped them up: did the jigane/jihada/yakiba finally give them away or was the mei ultimately seen as unconvincing?

 Anyone's views would be welcome.

 Arnold F.

 

 

Yes Fujishiro's rankings correlate with the ease of passing higher papers.

 

Because Fujishiro's rankings are good predictor's of a smith's quality of work and historical importance, which is what Juyo is about.

 

Fujishiro rankings always need to be adjusted for time period and school... Jo-jo saku Ko-Bizen is a much higher ranking than Jo-jo saku Shinshinto. So factor in the context first and it gives you an approximation of what you can expect. It also shows there is a flaw when some people decide they want to shop for a "Sai-jo" sword because it means something different in every period and school.

 

Mei: 

 

1. Presence of a mei or date is critical in passing higher papers... if we're talking Muromachi and up it is essential, Nanbokucho and below, gives bonus points. This is because the mei itself makes a blade important due to having lost so many.

 

2. For the koto masters at Juyo and sometimes at Tokuju we will see mint condition o-suriage mumei blades and then some signed tachi that is otherwise worn down. I've asked about what's happened to the ones that were signed and mint condition and I was told "Kokuho or Jubi" which is about what can be expected. 

 

3. Given a signed badly beaten blade with signature and a mint condition suriage mumei blade, the mint condition blade probably has the upper hand if they are competing for the same slot. The prices though will be opposite, where the signed one carries a premium because there isn't much subjective judgment that goes into it and there are more good condition mumei swords than there are zaimei masterworks by old smiths. So you can get a situation where the Tokuju mumei piece is less expensive than a Juyo signed piece and the Juyo signed piece may not easily pass Tokuju because of condition. Papers are just a guideline for the bottom end of the range.

 

4. "there are no signed Masamune of daito length" 

 

There is one but it is saiha and in a bit of dispute. The Kinoshita Masamune and it is Jubi.

 

5. "what is the weight of the presence of a mei  judged to be genuine"

 

I'm not 100% clear on what that question is... I think the mei is what builds the book of work so determining the authenticity of the mei and condition of the nakago is the first step to any classification. If the mei is considered genuine then the upper has to be by definition. Even if it doesn't agree with the books, means the books need updating.

 

6. "As an extension from this issue we all have heard of very convincing and deceptive utsushi done of old famous name smiths by otherwise more or less unemployed early Meiji smiths. I suppose some went unmasked for a while and wonder what eventually tripped them up: did the jigane/jihada/yakiba finally give them away or was the mei ultimately seen as unconvincing?"

 

I think more that for those fakers like Kajihei they are always just good enough to fool 50% of the people in favorable conditions for the scam. Just like people come here and post Chinese blades and ask us if they are good and it's obvious to us, there is always some level of knowledge which can be obtained and is enough to shoot yourself in the foot.

 

To sell these what you need is:

 

a. half-assed attempt to mimic the school

b. half-assed signature

c. greedy and somewhat uneducated buyer who wants something with a "best" name on it but is trying to beat the market and buy it for 10% -or-

d. someone who wants a fake for another purpose

 

There is no money I think for them to try to expend 1,000 times the effort it would take to fool a high level expert. So most of these fakes are not so convincing. It will break down somewhere, I think on a case by case basis.

 

Looking at Omori work online is a great way to see it in action. If you never saw a real one then these fakes can be confusing to you. Once you see a real one the fakes are no longer confusing. Once you accept there are maybe 100 fake Omori for every real one, you need to be starting from the standpoint that the piece has to convince you. If you fall into the mindset of "well the signature is no good but it's still an Omori school piece" then you are doing the exact thought pattern that the Meiji fakers require in order to make a sale.