bigjohnshea

Bumpery Will sell the katana koshirae at 400$ now, alone. Shipping covered international or whatever. Amida tsuba is no longer available. Tanto/tosu koshirae is now 150$

Parfaite, About 40$ likely... Please email me at bigjohnshea@yahoo.com Cheers! :-)

I'm not going to lower the individual prices again, but if someone wants all the above advertised for 550$ it's a deal. Cheers!

Katana koshirae is now 500$ Tanto/tosu koshirae is now 225$ Amida tsuba is now 75$ Package deal for all three is 700$ Get some...

Update: Apparently a friend here on NMB thinks my "tanto" koshirae advertised above is more likely to be a koshirae for a tosu instead. He also indicated it could be older than I think. I'd take his word for it, he's much more experienced at this than I am. I only study blades... Cheers!

That's it! Please email me at bigjohnshea@yahoo.com if anyone is interested. DO NOT PM ME HERE! I don't check the board enough to see messages. Thanks for looking!

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Katana Koshirae This katana koshirae came with an Oei era tachi I bought recently. It’s really not something I like, and it does not fit the tachi as it should; neither in it’s nature as a katana koshirae (not a tachi koshirae) nor does it physically fit the blade very well. Very loose. The placement of the menuki hole is keeping the fittings from being tight around the area of the fuchi. The tsuba wiggles when the nakago is in the tsuka. Anyhow, I know nothing about what the features of this koshirae are. The fuchi and kashira look attractive, some flowers, a little bit of gold (no idea if real gold) features that are worn off in parts. Wrap is tight. Menuki are attractive, look like bundles of flowers maybe. Not sure what they are. The tsuba is not very heavy. Looks to be in decent condition. No signature. No idea of age or school or style. Looks like it has a clover on it. The saya is solid. No split in it. The kojiri feels like it basically just lacquered wood like the rest of the saya. Saya is in good shape overall. I’ve seen katana koshirae like this sell for 700-1000$ before and I’ll be happy if I get the low end of that, but I’m not rigid on it. Happy to hear offers.

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Tanto Koshirae I bought this from an “antiquities dealer” in Japan. I put that in quotes because he claimed it was an antique koshirae for a tanto, but when I got it, it clearly did not have a menuki hole in it so I suspect this was recently manufactured. Maybe a few decades old at best, but it clearly has never been used as actual fittings for a sword. It’s a nice little design though, and if you have a tanto small enough to fit in it, and have the tools to make it work, you can have a nice package out of it. I paid 300$ plus shipping for it and would be thrilled if I got that back, but that was under the assumption it was antique... I’ll take what I can get for it as long as I don’t feel like I’m being beat up too much. J Make an offer if you like.

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Amida Tsuba That’s all I know about this. No idea of age. No signature. It’s heavy, and it looks better in person than it does in the photos. I bought it here some time ago. Can’t remember how much for, andhad big intentions of building a koshirae around it for my one sword that actually has a koshirae. Never got around to that. Anyhow, I know it was atleast 100$ so that’s my asking price. J

Hello All, Hope you are doing well. I do not collect koshirae, and infact do not even like to keep my swords in koshirae, so I have some koshirae and a tsuba available for sale. If you want to make an offer, please do not hesitate. My prices are entirely based on what I paid, or what I see similar things selling for on ebay. I’m pretty flexible. Will ship to the US for free. Shipping is additional if sending international. Payment by Paypal only, via “Friends and Family”. Photos and items to come in the comments below. I'll let you know when I'm done posting. Please hold any comments until then. Thanks for looking! John A. Shea, MD

Jesus H Christ... This is precisely the reason why I barely come here any more... So much of this "you're attacking me" crap... Darcy, Grow up. I wasn't attacking you, I was stating my opinion of why you have the perspectives you have, and as someone who makes some part of a living selling high end collectibles like meteorites, yes, I do "know" people like you. FYI, your opinions are not all correct just because you are who you are. Thanks for the "smack down" or whatever you think this was up above, but in reality, the Japanese merchant who sold it with green papers is just as respected as you are, so maybe your wisdom is not as universally valid as you think it is... If I thought this couldn't pass shinsa I wouldn't buy it at all. Regardless of my income I don't have enough money to waste it on tantos that I think will fail shinsa. What a ridiculous notion... I'm not going to reveal my purchase price but it is not as low as 5500$. Wish it were... Would save myself a bundle... I've said enough and I have no skin in the sword sales arena to justify taking the time to argue with you. I actually did consider you something of a friend and potential source for future purchases until now, but I guess your hypervigilant attitude toward any commentary at all about you has put an end to that... Take care everyone, John A. Shea, MD

Interesting story. Will try to find that program. In the meteorite world the real equivalent to shinsa for a rare specimen is testing the specimen in a lab and having it "paired" to the data collected from the larger mass it supposedly originated from. This is more often than not an impossible task (labs are overwhelmed as it is, and there are not many experts to begin with) and a destructive process as well to the specimen in question. So provenance is even more valuable in that setting. I've become accustomed to this, but I could see how nihonto collectors may not put as much faith in provenance as I do.

Paul, Agree entirely. On a slightly different topic, I know many people view green papers as questionable due to the development of poor standards in the NBTHK, and this looming awful threat of Yakuza involvement; which feels like it is thrown around more as a twist to an interesting story than an actual piece of evidence to invalidate a paper. At the end of the day this tanto was actually sold out of the collection of an historic family, by a well respected merchant in Japan, to a well known collector, who is about as close to an expert on Muramasa as I have ever seen here in the US, and has a great track record with his own buyers. In the meteorite world, we call that "very good provenance." The only way it could get better is if a museum owned it for a while then deaccessioned it, and it had a TJuyo paper. :-) But in that case, I wouldn't be able to afford it at all. Yes, at the end of the day I would still need the new official awesome shinsa paper to max out its value in a sale, but the family this tanto came out of actually has a trail of history that practically reaches back to the days of Muramasa himself. No, it doesn't make the green paper any more valid, but it does make me a lot less concerned that the Yakuza or poor shinsa standards earned it the paper.

Matt, That goes without saying. I know Darcy well and have learned alot from him in the past years. He's a merchant not a collector. Bottom line. I think similarly about other collectibles I sell, primarily meteorites. If push came to shove there is only a short list of maybe 50 specimens in my collection of 500+ that I would not sell. Similarly to nihonto though, for those 50 specimens, great provenance (the equivalent of shinsa for meteorites) is good to have, but I don't need it as long as I trust who I bought it from, and know what I'm buying well enough. Furthermore, I've been collecting and selling merteorites long enough to know that the only people who really know more about them than I do is a select handful of scientists. Darcy can likely say the same thing about Nihonto and Tanobe Sensei, or someone with an equivalent knowledge to Tanobe Sensei. That does not mean Darcy will want the opinion of Tanobe Sensei when he is convinced he knows what he has, and definitely wants to keep it to himself. Though I wonder if that would ever happen... I could have never sold a Go Yoshihiro to someone else... To make a long topic even longer, in my opinion, the mentality of "I must submit to shinsa in order to know what this is", is really only shared by those who intend to sell eventually, are uncertain of their purchase, or are uncertain of what they should learn from the blade. I know what I need to learn from this tanto. Nothing. I know what I'm going to sell this tanto for. Nothing. I do not lack certainty, and I want for nothing from this tanto but the joy of owning it, so shinsa is of no use to me in regard to this tanto.

Didn't intend to "challenge" you, just a statement of facts concerning your perception of the strokes in the mei. Your extensive commentary on this topic still does not fuel a significant concern for this being gimei. The signature appears perfectly genuine, and minor details like strokes are not documented well enough for particular smiths (particularly a school like Sengo with relatively few examples) to justify claiming gimei on that basis. More below about this... The nakago shows no signs of being reshaped. I think you are reaching on this comment, which is why you did not mention this in your initial comments. Do not mean to offend. Just my perception... It is no longer an active listing, btw. I'm buying it and keeping it, and have no intention of submitting for shinsa because I'm convinced it is real. I don't need NBTHK or NTHK to tell me what I should believe. Opinions between collectors are no different than opinions from shinsa. There is a reason the NBTHK never puts generations of Muramasa on their papers. Uncertainty is everywhere in this realm of collectibles because history is often unverifiable, and the fund of knowledge surrounding a school/smith will often change. If I submitted this tanto ten times to the NTHK I'd probably get all four different results concerning generation and/or time it was created: gimei, shodai, nidai, sandai, with multiples of one or others. So why bother...? Even if it comes with THozon papers, resubmitting twenty years from now with slightly different papers may get it a lower or higher paper. So again, what difference does it make if I submit? Even with a TJuyo paper in the sale what matters most is if I trust who I buy it from, my own knowledge of the school, and the features of the blade. Take care.

Sorry but you are incorrect about the sequence of strokes. If you look closely at numerous examples online, you'll see that there are variations of overlapping between the verticle and horizontal strokes of the "Mura" character. Most prominently the blade in the Tokyo museum which has both verticle strokes overlapping the hosrizontal. As a general comment, This tanto has nearly all the features of a Nidai Muramasa: If you compare the features of this blade to the information available about the mutlitple generations of Muramasa in the excellent document online "Muramasa: How to Distinguish the Generations", as well as other sources online, and in texts, this tanto is the most likely the work of Nidai Muramasa. The mei is most suggestive of a second or third generation Muramasa, but the shape of the nakago and the features of the hamon are more suggestive of the Nidai than the Sandai. The Nidai's work tends to be less adherent to symmetry on either side of the blade. Tantos by the Nidai tend to have a turn back after the boshi that is longer and/or thinner on one side than the other. Additionally, this seller is not only a long time member of this page, but only collects Muramasa. He has also sold numerous Muramasa blades to perfectly happy buyers. This tanto was sold originally from the collection of the Tsuchiya clan by Kimura San, a well respected merchant in Saitama, and was sold along with 9 other blades from the same collection. It is not at all uncommon to have blades in older family collections sell without being repapered, as the cost and time associated with repapering is often prohibitive give the number of blades involved and potential motives for selling. Additionally, the current seller may never have sent the blade for new papers simply because they have other blades they favor getting papered first, for sales purposes, etc. There are many good reasons, including just being happy with the blade and the current paper as it is. The warning link concerning green paper's aside, Not everything with a green paper is a potential fraud. Use your eyes and your knowledge and you can see authenticity regardless of papers or none. Cheers.

Would you carry an elaborate koshirae like this into battle? I don't think anyone would... I think it's a ceremonial sword. Whatever it is, it's incredible... Wish I had the kind of discretionary funds it takes to acquire something like this. Best on your sale. Cheers

I've bought from Florian before and he is a very reliable, trustworthy merchant. If you are considering this blade he will not dissappoint you. Cheers!

This is on hold pending payment. Donation to the board coming. Sometime soon. :-)