Kronos

It's basically 30cm, 3cm, 0.3cm and a little change so easy to work out rough estimates and add a little.

Agreed Jean, there are some exceptions that can be a little confusing however. Take an Ubu Nanbokucho Wakizashi for example and other strange things that don't fit. I've never practiced Iai but being 6'7" I'd need a behemoth of a sword

Sorry to take this off topic but I'd love to hear more about how length effects prices (feel free to PM me if you ever have time) as it's rather strange with Tanto being worth more than Wak's and then all the other intricacies such as western collectors favouring longer blades (over 78cm) and that driving the price of them up. It would make a very good article for the article section if anyone with more knowledge than myself had the inclination to write it.

Does size really matter?

Ah thats it, not sure where Higo came from

I've seen a Tsuba that's very similar to this recently, I can't for the life of me find it now though. It may of been papered to Higo.

A quick bump to say I'm going to start listing these on ebay Sunday so feel free to make offers on the remaining 8 until then. I'm also now accepting USD & JPY so no currency conversion fees.

I think there's only oshigata for the Shodai in that PDF. You'll need to be careful though as he's relatively highly rated so will no doubt be a target for forgeries.

http://www.militaria.co.za/Books/Fujishiro%20-%20Nihon%20Toko%20Jiten,%20Shinto.pdf Looks like the signature could be good but hard to tell from the photo's provided. You'd need to compare to several examples.

Looks like a Shinto blade to me. I'd suggest 2 things: try to find examples of the 2 generations of Tadayuki's mei to compare and as Grey said let a trained togishi look at it to determine whether it A) can be polished and B) is worth polishing. From there you can make a better decision. There was a link floating around here somewhere to a Japanese site that had uploaded a copy of Fujishiro's which has examples of both generations signatures in the Shinto volume pages 136/137.

Shrine swords often weren't mounted so no need for ana, I'm presuming this is what that is. I remember seeing it at the time it was auctioned and thought it was interesting.

I'm looking forward to some pictures

Thanks Stephen, will take a look.

Ebay is a strange, strange place. I sold a sarute for $187.50 + postage the other day which is fair to say I was very happy about as I had it for sale here for half that. Now I can't sell a mint condition naval Tassel and got one offer for less than half a conservative estimate. Then when you factor in deadbeat buyers, all the con artist sellers and buyers who do chargebacks etc and the ebay + paypal fees there's a reason I don't use it unless I absolutely have to. The prices that are realized seem completely random.

Tokubetsu Kicho paper for Kodogu, Mumei Tsuba Attributed to Umetada, paper dated Showa 51, 3rd month, 7th day a.k.a: 7th march 1976. The only other relevant info is the theme and description of the Tsuba ; neither of which I can read

Bump.

I found myself contemplating just how hard it is to kantei something the other day and how much of that was simply shear knowledge of all the schools/smiths work styles. This got me thinking that it wouldn't be too hard given the easy classifcations to create a Kantei phone app that does most of the legwork for you provided you can identify what you're seeing. This would tie in with younger collectors that don't like reading dusty old books as Ken puts it. If i had 1,000 spare hours and better coding skills it might be a wortthwhile endeavour. Alas i do not but it's something worth thinking about. There's things you can only get from holding a blade in hand and getting a feel for it and certainly the Sugata would be particularly difficult but I reckon it would be possible to create something that could narrow any given work down to a few schools at the very least.

[R]Elmore = Bimore? Was your Grandfather named Coldy by any chance?

For Juyo swords have to be Pre-Meiji and Zaimei if post nanbokucho. Pretty much anything Shinto or later needs to be by a Jo saku or higher rated smith or have some form of historical significance.

This is an excellent article and I look forward to reading the rest in the series. I think I've learnt more about Sori than I have from many books that just don't give that good an explanation.

Although I didn't know Veli that well he always came across as someone very knowledgeable and willing to share that knowledge with others with a rare generosity of his time. He shall be deeply missed. My thoughts and condolences are with his family at this time.

Plus it's quite easy to open a safe with the door facing upwards as you can get good leverage and simply brute force it.

The Wakizashi looked very good but as I have no money currently I didn't pursue it further.

The Sarute just sold on ebay for almost double what I was offering it for here, the Tassel has just gone to auction but I'll still pull the listing for NMB members for £100 + fees. Will start sending the Tsubas to ebay next week if they don't sell here, I'm always open to offers.

I'm glad to hear it Gwyn