Worth The Drool

[Stephen]

anyone have 100 spare  bitcoins

 

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/u152016501

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

700

[SwordGuyJoe]

Certainly a gorgeous sword that prompts the question of, why was this not papered after Tokubetsu Kicho papers were invalidated?

[Stephen]

i dont need paper towels when i drool i use my sleeve   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

698

[Japan auctions]

I was salivating over this, myself. 

A pretty penny, to be sure.  Repatriated from US Compton Collection.

Showa 37 (1962) older Tokubetsu Kicho certificate...

Seller Kimura-San one of my favs.

 

Kelly Schmidt

[Valric]

Truly amazing, the activity is just unbelievable. Thanks for pointing it out. 

[mywei]

looks like a really good piece even if not legit kiyomaro. worth a bid either way

[Vermithrax16]

Certainly a gorgeous sword that prompts the question of, why was this not papered after Tokubetsu Kicho papers were invalidated?

Good question!

[Darcy]

Certainly a gorgeous sword that prompts the question of, why was this not papered after Tokubetsu Kicho papers were invalidated?

 

 

Because it's absolutely and without question a fake, and not even a good one at that.

 

If a guy in Rome was posting a Da Vinci on ebay it would be as real as a guy in Japan posting a Tokubetsu Kicho Kiyomaro on Yahoo Japan. 

[SwordGuyJoe]

Absolutely correct! I was asking the question that, while a lovely sword, should be the one anyone asks themselves when they see a big name, or really most blades in Japan with Kicho papers, since for them the process is FAR simpler as compared to foreigners. They either tried and it failed or they didn't try because they knew it would fail.

 

Still if purchased as gimei, it's a lovely gimei sword.

[Darcy]

 

Still if purchased as gimei, it's a lovely gimei sword.

 

 

When you buy a fake Rolex on the street in Bangkok you pay about $10 and it is a lovely gimei watch as well.

 

But you paid ten bucks for it.

[Brian]

Yes, but there is no chance your gimei Rolex turns out to be a Cartier or a Panerai that someone added a Rolex name to.
Slim chance, yes. But no guarantee that a gimei sword is bad quality. You can still find decent swords with gimei, if you learn how to spot quality.

[Darcy]

Not this one. 

 

The problem with a smith like Kiyomaro is that the fakery has to either be on some mumei masterpiece Shinto (which is a unicorn) that was floating around beforehand and then upgraded with a fake mei (double unicorn), or it has to be a purpose made fake coming from some period after his death. Anyone coming after Kiyomaro and faking him will not give you a blade of any quality or any value after it's rendered mumei. There isn't anyone significant enough in that time period who would do it, and make it have value. 

 

That's why nobody has knocked the signature off of it.

 

Economics is a big argument in many of these things if you want to understand what you're looking at.

 

If you did remove the mei and tried to paper this at the NBTHK it would likely fail. NTHK would likely flunk it and tell you it is Showa work. 

 

It's garbage. 

 

Find yourself a gimei Hankei and you open the period of the fakery up. Fakery periods cannot be earlier than the smith, that's the Kiyomaro issue above and makes it most likely a Showa fake. Gimei Hankei now should ring a few bells:

 

1. fakery period is from the 1600s until now

2. if the skill is high it could be a koto work since this smith copied Norishige

 

In this case you take the gamble. In the case of Hankei I saw this happen and the result was Shizu. The blade was o-suriage and someone dummied it up as a Hankei wakizashi. Pop the mei off and you get an upgrade in this case. If you cannot judge the work though you could have bought a Showa fake. 

 

But knowing when you have one situation and the other takes a bit of common sense mixed with knowledge. Chasing gimei Kiyomaro is a fool's errand though because of the time period. Chasing gimei Kotetsu or Shinkai is another one because of the styles. They are all going to be lesser value garbage. Hence, they tend to retain their mei and continue on the sucker-circuit for people who think they are good.

 

Fish long enough and someone will take a stab on it. Once they have their options laid out in front of them by a polisher or a dealer, they always do the same thing: they inject it right back into the market. Because they are told, strike the mei off of this thing and you have nothing of value. Sell it as-is and you can retain some of the value you sunk into it. 

 

This is why they churn and churn and churn. People need to look at the evidence and draw a reasonable conclusion. 

 

If you find a gimei Horikawa Kunihiro you could have Soshu or Yamashiro work. If you have a gimei Umetada Myoju you could have Soshu or Yamashiro work. If you have a gimei Kunikane you could have Yamato work. Depending on the condition of the blade and nakago and if it appears it could be suriage or maybe a mumei hirazukuri wakizashi. This is where some experience comes into play. At an extreme one could even hope to get a Rai Kunimitsu out of a gimei Tadayoshi. They hinge on being guys that copied koto work so there is a chance that this is really koto work. That's where the focus should be if you want to speculate on something fake. 

 

But the flip side of this is that these situations are quite rare as those works that are being covered up do as mumei on their own, have value.

 

So when you sort them into piles A and B, pile A with useful gimei you can remove and get value out of is very small and pile B are fakes that came much after and will have no value and is quite large. Depending on how smart or stupid you are the sorting will be different. But if your pile A ends up big and your pile B ends up small, this is a sign that you are not a good judge. 

 

Speaking as a guy who bought a gimei Yukimitsu that ended up as most likely Soshu Sadamune in Tanobe sensei's opinion. I knew that was gimei but I knew I was looking at Nanbokucho period Soshu work in wakizashi form. I knew it had to go to Nobukuni at least. Speaking as a guy who bought a fake Masamune paired with it and thought it could be Shizu but ended up being Shinto. Once it was Shinto and posted here as a Jo-jo saku smith and the work itself beautiful, it still has almost zero value one it is mumei. 

 

But I knew at least I was looking at fakery and did a so-so job at sorting my piles out. 

 

So if you can get it for ten dollars, knock yourself out. If it costs $20,000 like this fake above, you are doing something extremely stupid. If you spend $70k like I did you need to be reasonably sure of your skill and what you're looking at as it is a huge risk.

 

I can tell you if a fake Kiyomaro was in the same auction, by the math I wouldn't spend a dime on it though because I know that there is no future of that blade that can end in a good story. All of the potentials turn out as a dud. If you have a gimei Yukimitsu and you know that it is Soshu nanbokucho work for sure, because you have owned many Soshu Nanbokucho works of the Juyo level, then you know that all of the futures of the sword are good. It can come out as Sadamune, Nobukuni, Akihiro, Hiromitsu, Takagi Sadamune, and only a few others. So you can look at the worst case and use that to underscore. This hinges entirely on knowing what you're looking at, and I applied the exact same logic to the Masamune and failed. I failed in that case because I do not study enough Shinto work and I was unable to come to the conclusion that this was Horikawa school work copying earlier Soshu. I thought it was enough to be koto Soshu and I was wrong, due to lack of knowledge and experience. I hoped for Shizu. I was prepared to settle at Naoe Shizu. I still got master level quality on it so I wasn't wrong in judging the maker's skill, I just hoped too strongly and didn't distrust enough in what I was looking at. 

 

As I said above, the fake Rolex only costs you $10 and therein lies the crux of the matter. If your fake Rolex costs you $20k then even if it ends up being a real Timex under the hood you have still screwed up in a capital way because you got sucked into the dream of Kiyomaro and beating the market.