Pet Dragon Solves Faux Roman Numeral Mystery!

[Seth]

After reading through this thread when it popped into my feed I looked into my mumei type 98. I believe you are correct on the \ being 5 if you haven't already come to that conclusion

 

My nakago, fuchi, and habaki are filed with \I + III. The tsuba and tseppa are marked with 63. No stamps that I can find FWIW. 

[Bruce Pennington]

9 hours ago, John C said:

they tried to stamp the 58 as XXX + XX + whatever, rather than just / + /III.

Ah, now I see!  I couldn't figure out what the heck that number was!

[BANGBANGSAN]

On 6/3/2023 at 9:09 PM, Bruce Pennington said:

Ah, now I see!  I couldn't figure out what the heck that number was!

Yep,XXXXX 50 and  /III 8=58

[John C]

3 hours ago, BANGBANGSAN said:

Yep,XXXXX 50 and  /III 8=58

Trystan:

This is one of the things that made me curious. Typically, it seems, the numbers were not added together - just written down. For 58, I would not expect a bunch of x's added together; instead I would expect just the / for 5 and the /III for 8. Was it common for the numbers to have been added?

John C.

[Tensho]

Not sure if this is of any interest,  but I just picked this up, 133 on all parts.. Army Gunto, older blade. Everything is in pretty rough shape..

[Tensho]

Continuation to saya. 

[John C]

Looks right. You'll notice the tsuka is marked with what looks like a + rather than a  - for the one. I have seen this before; probably so they did not confuse the 1 3 with a 4. I have also seen them use the + or x in place of a 0.

John C.

[BANGBANGSAN]

@Bruce Pennington

 

Found 6 "X"s on the handle spine of a factory reworked type 30 bayonet, and the wood grip marked 60.

 

 

[John C]

Reworked - that's  interesting. Could explain the variation in how the roman numbers were written.

John C.

[Bruce Pennington]

Another using the ">" as a 5, on a Mantetsu, found by @Ontario_Archaeology Matt at this Buyee.jp auction