Kronos

I'm with Grey and Paul. From my understanding a touch up polish would be just the shiage stage and still costs around 50% of a full polish, only really suitable in special situations.

Yeah leave it with Stephen, he does a fantastic job of shipping

The only use of Ishibashi in Sesko's index is for a first name or a place in Izumo province. I think you'll find it'll be the 2nd or 3rd gen Ishido Suketoshi who specialized in Yari, maybe it was one of their first names?

Hira.

Naotane as well for me, although I couldn't personally see the uzumaki on this sword :/

You are indeed correct Jean, it was early

They're not wakizashi but no-dachi predating the advent of wakizashi in the last days of Nanbokucho. I haven't seen any in hand but there's several references with them in and they come up for sale on the odd rare occassion. In terms of wakizashi with tachi mei after Oei I haven't seen any.

There's no such thing as alternatve facts, only conmen and fools (Nothing to do with Kanetoyo as i haven't dealt with him).

Mark it as "personal belongings" on the customs form when it is returned and do not include a value. At least this is what i was told by a customs agent when there was a little confusion getting a sword returned from Australia.

Hi Dennis and welcome, it's always suggested to buy books before jumping into a first purchase to get a better understanding of what you're after as tastes develop and change with greater knowledge so what you enjoy now may not be the case in a year or two. Also the added time would allow you to save up for something better depending on your current budget. There's several very experienced members from Hawaii that you could learn from and I believe Ken runs a study group.

Try Parcelforce through ParcelMonkey.co.uk, it's a hell of a lot cheaper.

It's too hard to pick just one, I could maybe settle for 4 in no particular order: Awataguchi sugu and nashiji Soshu O-mokume and gentle notare Oei Bizen koshi-hiraki gunome-choji midare and mokume/O-Mokume Fukouka Ichimonji, kinda like Yamatorige.

That's a beautiful display Ray, I can but hope to have one half as nice as that one day. Grev, I knew you had a lot of Tsuba but that is insane. For me I haven't made any space for a display yet so everything is locked away in the closet.

In shinto and shinshinto it's not desirable at all, same as suriage but the further back you go the more permissible it becomes. The Japanese love their brands but having said that it has to be taken on a case by case basis imho. If I found a Hankei or Horikawa Kunihiro that was mumei then the quality is going to be on a level where you can be 99.9% certain it was made by that smith for a fraction of the price. Take these 2 swords as an example: http://sanmei.com/contents/media/K48473_S1245_PUP_E.html http://www.japanesesword.de/?site=sword&id=74&lang=en ¥6m and 25k Euro (About ¥3m), yet I would argue the second is a superior sword in almost every respect except it is not juyo, mumei and machi-okuri (I think the first maybe slightly suriage but not positive). It won't achieve juyo status as it is directly competing with all the signed morimitsu's. To be fair to the iesuke I don't think they're the best photo's and it's in older polish but the fact remains there is such a wealth on knowledge about Morimitsu that if the NBTHK attributes it to him it may as well be signed and it is a fantastic example.

Very nice Peter, out of interest what features point to an utsushi of Kanemitsu as I'm not seeing it?

Bazza's idea's on it being Bizen fit with my own although kantei in an out of polish sword is a most futile pursuit you can get some idea's from the shape. muromachi Bizen looks most likely but it needs a window to get a firmer idea.

If it were saiba the papers would mention it. Any signed sword by magaroku is going to pass th provided there's no fatal flaws so does th add any value? Not really as the difference between an almost juyo and his worst tired work is all going to lie in the th range so one has to rely on their own eyes to judge qaulity.

Gabriel echo's my own thoughts, kodai kanemoto based off probability but if it isn't described in the book it'd be very hard to find out. If it's a book by the net maybe it's a sword in their collection?

Speaking of Habaki, this is my favourite I've seen: Once I find the right sword that's worth getting a new koshirae made I'm going to commission one very similar to it. From what I recall the sword it was on just looked like a o-suriage mumei shinto but with very nice fittings. It sold for quite a lot (around £6k iirc) so maybe i'm missed something. Would love to find out what it actually was.

The 2 reasons that spring to mind are the smith doing the suriage copied it from lower down the nakago that was removed or it's gimei, probably the former considering all other things.

There's a Nagayuki with this inscription in Markus' Shinto Kantei if you wanted to double check.

I think it may be "ko kuwa o motte kore o saku" meaning made with the steel of an old hoe.

Agreed with JJ, for 5M Yen I'd be looking elsewhere. It's what I'd call a nearly sword, whereby it's "nearly" a very good sword but it's missing something imho.

How is TH a big jump now? It seems as easy as it ever was provided the new age/ubu/signed requirements are met unless there's been a change in quality level that I haven't noticed? If there were a change then that would cause problems in a similar fashion to judging Juyo from the late 70's.

So this is a shameless plug for your tadayoshi conspiracy "photograph"?