School me please on (possibly) old tsuba on newer katana/wakizashi

[Shuriken]

I've come across swords like those pictured, wherein a fairly common looking sword has a non-typical tsuba, including the kozuka-ana. Is this common? Why would an "old" (if genuine) tsuba be fitted to a later year blade? Thank you--appreciate learning from the pros here.

[Jake6500]

5 hours ago, Shuriken said:

I've come across swords like those pictured, wherein a fairly common looking sword has a non-typical tsuba, including the kozuka-ana. Is this common? Why would an "old" (if genuine) tsuba be fitted to a later year blade? Thank you--appreciate learning from the pros here.

 

Blades are not my thing but from my understanding I believe it is pretty common practice to sell high quality old blades on their own without fittings, as well as to take older fittings and fit them to newer blades and sell them together. I think it boils down to the fact that decent quality older blades have a lot of value on their own whilst lower quality older fittings have less value unless there is a blade of some kind attached so that they can be sold as a complete sword. This leads to the practice of mixing and matching to maximize profit.

[KungFooey]

Hi,

Even nowadays you get iai people putting real old guards on their pot-metal swords. I guess it's just to feel a connection with the old samurai?

 

Dee

[Shugyosha]

It's possible that it was done to deceive, but some people just like a project: they buy a blade (old or modern) and then assemble the fittings around it or they needed something by way of a tsunagi and used a cheap metal blade instead.

[Tensho]

Pictures are two gunto. So I would be very suspicious that they have older iron tsuba. Not unheard of, but rarely seen especially with type 94/98 mounts. One is also missing seppa.