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Posted

For what little it's worth;

Two swords, one long, one short, both signed and in very elaborate "fancy" koshirae all in mint condition, brought back from a Perry expedition turned up in a small upstate New York village by a friend who is a gun dealer, this was before we knew each other in the 1980's.

 

He described, the swords were in a long chest shown to him along with the officers uniform and a letter. Sorry, I cannot recall exactly what he told me about the letter, however, it authenticated, at least in his mind, that what he was looking at was real. The family sold the swords to my friend, but would not part with the letter or uniform. In turn the swords were sold to a local sword dealer, who then reportedly shuffled them off to one of the big auction houses in New York. 

 

Beyond this I have no more information. My thoughts, questions, now, were the auction houses aware of what they had, and were the swords sold separately or together? Was this a true daisho? I tried contacting the sword dealer to learn more, but my messages were not returned.

 

In a touch of irony, it turns out that I used to hang out at the ice cream parlor shop with friends right next door to the sword dealer's antiques by appointment shop.

Posted

Peter, Franco, I once investigated on behalf of a very wealthy collector in the US what was supposed to be Perry material here in the UK. What the dealer had was a US naval bicorn hat with a New York address on the maker's label, a very old but rather small US flag and a telescope. Nothing that could be related to Perry just a collection of old bits. Needless to say they were dismissed. 

Ian Bottomley

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