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Something I've wondered for a while: those fake Japanese swords on ebay, the ones that were supposedly made by Chinese slaves, when & where & for what purpose were they made?

chif.jpg

I don't believe the slave story, I never saw one till I 1st logged onto ebay, they all have the same amount of dirt and corrosion which tells me they must be artificially aged: they've got to be fakes.

But why would someone/some company go to all that trouble to make something that looks nothing like the original? Can any of you enlighten me? I'd appreciate it.

Grey

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Okay, here's the skinny on Chinese crappers as they are affectionately known.

 

If you notice most of these post have similar stories. "Chinese slaves were forced to make these swords for the Japanese during WWII." Or they are advertised as "Genuine, real--NOT FAKE--museum grade EMPEROR SAMURAI SWORD--very old."

 

The real story is that they are contemporary fakes. Why would they do this? Because even though the starting bid is $0.99, the SHIPPING is $109.00. Yes, $10 for the parts and labor to make the crapper. Maybe, $25 in shipping. This mean $75 in profit guarunteed. For the Chinese counterfeiters, this is an excellent return on investment.

 

You see, most people in the US have never seen a real Japanese sword except in the movies. So as long as it vaguely looks like something you'd see on film, you are bound to fool someone into buying it. It doesn't take much education to tell a crapper from a nihonto, but it does take some. Most people are fooled because they have never handled the real thing.

 

At least you had the good sense to recognize it as a fake. Most of the time people ask us about their new "toy" after they've made their first mistake.

 

Take care....

 

DaveF.

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Grey is a longtime collector and member of the JSSUS, so there is no chance he would be fooled by these fakes, but David is correct...the vast majority of people out there have no idea what a Japanese sword looks like, so when they see these with "Japanese writing" on the blade, they assume they are correct. I have some doubts that some of the fakers know what a real Nihonto looks like. These small factories just churn them out by the hundreds at a cost of a few $'s and probably don't bother trying to research what a real sword looks like. They don't sit on the net and research how to make them better. I bet they are made for under $5.

Once you know that a Chinese Tokarev pistol costs us (distributor) under $40...then you have an idea how cheap these swords must be to make.

So basically as long as they sell...the Chinese will make them. And I guess by not copying the real thing exactly..they are also able to say they were not made to deceive :?

I am not sure when they started producing them, but it may have started shortly after the war..or maybe as recently as the 80's. Maybe they were originally intended as "pretty" wallhangers...but when people started buying them as the real thing..it just grew from there. I have seen some of these come out of collections that were built before eBay was popular...so I don't think they were made for the eBay market.

These in the pics are the bottom of the barrel...but we have seen the other factories that are seeing the possibilities and improving their fakes.

 

Brian

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Grey,

 

I collected militaria for about 25 years and I used to see these at gun and militaria shows on occasion as far back in the 1980's. I seem to remember someone telling me that a huge number of them were sold in the Phillippines (or perhaps indonesia?) to the tourist trade there. In antique shops in Los Angeles one could occasionally find them in an umbrella or cane stand, or hanging on the wall of a pawn shop. This p.o.s. has been around quite a while.

 

The willingly uneducated buy all sorts of look alikes. I get emails for "fauxlex" watches everyday. Heck, somebody's gotta be buying them. P.T. Barnum's staple diet was the ignorance of the masses.

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