Rivkin

I would say these are bettwen 200$ and maybe as high as 700$ a piece. Dragons and clouds with nanako, namban and the one with the script are my favorites. The rest is sort of late, but not criminally so. These do reflect a specific taste. My guess someone lived a lonely life as a collector and then died.

I have no idea why instead of a link people provide screenshots. The quality of horimono will be 90% of the price here. It needs to be seen high res.

All are good, some are just quite late, but some are really decent in every aspect.

Anything by Markus Sesko should do. "Connoseurs..." is a good book but for an advanced student looking for tables of basic features. It actually works better with search function in google books...

.... Probably said by a chemist. Stable nuclei can and do decay. The difference is that after a typical "decay" what remains will have higher energy compared to the original; unstable elements have lower energy after the decay. So compared to a collection of particles a stable element is a global equilibrium, unstable is local. In both cases there is an energy barrier that prevents the decay, but in the stable case the mechanisms for overcoming this barrier must involve absorbtion of energy... which with a negligibly small probability can occur even in the "ordinary" life. Oxidation is technically loss of electrons if the bond is ionic. The gold oxides one has to practically worry about however are covalent (shared electrons). Actual shakudo will include a healthy portion of covalent AuO, its violent oxidation method creating nanoparticles small enough to exhibit such combinations. However if gold is not powdered into nanoparticles, you don't have to think hard about the oxidation since most "conventional" oxides are either metastable or are stable in a very limited window of parameters. They can form, but operational conditions of a typical electronic component are sufficient for them to quickly dissolve back into gold, which will "stick" back to gold's surface. Compared to gold's plasticity this is a second order contributor to "why gold's surface always changes". Because its a second order and leaves no permanent change, its typically not widely discussed.

Gentlemen, I am suspecting I am a bit out of my comfortable depth, but: 1. Silver is not widely used in electronics industry despite having many advantages in terms of conductivity related metrics over gold: because it oxidizes. With jewelry it is not an issue at all as the layer is very thin and removed by any rubber eraser, but in electronics that would be difficult. In jewelry they indeed use "oxidized silver" which is black silver sulfide rather than silver oxide. This is also a common terror of houses build next to coal power plants or similar industry - copper and silver there has a sulfide problem. Its rather common in the UK apparently, but its not a universal problem. 2. Gold does not oxidize but its never used in jewelry as pure metal. Very old gold will loose a bit more gold due to its high plasticity and will become more copper-lead. So yes, with some skill and good color perception you can distinguish old Kofun period's or say Scythian gold because it has content which people typically don't use and their copper base was rather dirty. Gold is one of the most plastic metals and can actually wear and tear a lot.

Corrosion or rust, this is not normal patina as it forms even on 500-old piece of iron. The surface profile versus age is an interesting topic, as in many cases the roughness can increase at first and then decrease. Here the variation between ups and downs is extreme and everywhere, so there was an exposure to something rather aggressive or at high temperature. Some areas are flat, they were covered at the moment of exposure. Whether this was intentional or what's the tsuba's actual age is a bit difficult to infer.

1. More or less so. There are some good continental habaki though. 2. Probably no. 3. Cutlery etc., always gimicky. 4a. There are plenty in books. They are surprisingly old instruments. 4b. There were periodic attempts to use iron, but those were not characteristic. 4c. There are some decorative kozukas which are entirely soft metal, including the hamon's emulation. They are rare and can be very good looking. Otherwise not being truly in the know on this question, but I think kozuka is actually considerably later than kogai and was intended to be two piece more or less from the start. This one needs to be checked, there are not that many really old kozuka in books.

You can see a lot of quality in the hamon, but hada towards the mune is just tired. I actually think Oei works in suguha can easily be better than Nambokucho's. With Soshu its more of the opposite.

Nobody today will paper anything to shodai Nobukuni. Coming to think about it, its more than a bit of an arrogant statement and I should have checked the papers first, but... I papered quite a few to Nambokucho Nobukuni and the generation was not there. Verbally it was always coming down more to a specific era rather than the exact generation. Shodai is a name that people use, but it no longer has any definitive meaning. For a very long time it was shodai is pure Ryokai except for his very last works and his activity is circa 1320-1360 and then its all nidai, but there is just not that much that can even theoretically go into the shodai pile under this definition. There are tons of Nambokucho suguha works signed Nobukuni, most are of frankly speaking low quality. Suggests its a school rather than one person. Soshu works on the contrary all tend to be rather good. Datewise both styles nearly completely intersect each other. I should have been more careful to remember what are the earliest signed pieces, but in reality you'll have a pile of circa 1370-1380 suguha tanto signed Nobukuni and a smaller pile of those in Soshu style also signed Nobukuni. Yes, the Soshu style is more conservative than Hasebe and leans towards Sadamune, but many works have very prominent and high contrast mokume which reminds one of Hasebe or even Norishige school. Yamamura Masanobu has almost identical beginning period to Nobukuni, almost identical separation into Ryokai and Soshu styles, but some of his Soshu works are so "belted" in nie they are very reminscent of Norishige-Tametsugu and he was part of Echizen genealogy by tradition. But then in Nobukuni you see similar manner of tobiyaki, they are just not formed into really long masame-like "belts". Its a huge workshop until it collapsed down to but a few people with personal names in Oei era.

Its an old problem due to who is to be considered shodai Nobukuni. Part of it is if he was Ryokai's student and there is also Echizen genealogy which was considered canonical for a long time, both placing the shodai into 1320s. The earliest blades are all 1370-ish, though it has been argued some might be earlier. Current "sort of" understanding is when people say shodai they mean 1370-1390 works in Yamashiro style, when they say "nidai" they mean the same period but Soshu style, when they say sandai they mean Oei. This one is Oei papered so in a modern language can't be shodai.

You can pick it up at a swordshow for 250-500$.

A lot of it is, but there are arguments which are budget independent: You are more likely to damage your first piece. You should be encouraged by your first piece, thus it should be easy to appreciate. Expensive collectibles in difficult subjects are often not. He goes in particular into the notion of weathered being important, but hardly ever appreciated by the beginners. You should not build permanent collection until achieving a more or less well defined taste. You should not build collection of items above your appreciation level because it shows you as a person who has money, little taste and follows trends. You should not build collection of items above your appreciation level because its disrespectful to the items and more experienced collectors who might have bought those. You should not cause jealousy in certain people (Ashikaga san), who might cut your head off. The central argument for starting with something major was always greater potential for long term learning and appreciation.

I will do my usual stunt of being controversial. Its obvious the poster is trying to buy CHEAP authentic nihonto. There are more collectible blades, but... Though not in the same league as nihonto community luminaries, a tea master to Ashikaga Yoshimasa wrote a lengthy tractate on whether collecting should be started with minor or greater objects. The arguments made are all still valid today and he personally was on the side of minor, bright objects in near perfect condition as the best beginner's item. Well, this one sort of like this. One just needs to buy as cheaply as possible.

I think Shiboyama is very neat. Europeans absolutely hated shirosaya and overall did not care that much about the blades. Emperor Nicholas the 2nd had something like 10-13 blades outfitted with scrimshaw carved mounts so at least they would have some presentable look rather than shirasaya. However pre-Edo displays also tended to be in expensive mounts and never just shirasaya.

Option one: airmail (EMS) to the US, someone picking it up in the US and shipping any service to Germany. Option two: UPS. Requires special contract, but there is a considerable number of exporters in Japan who have those. I had issues with UPS.

They cut really well, and yes, they are the most brittle swords that ever existed in the world. You will not find non-Japanese blade with hagire and major chips also tend to be uncommon. There is a reason visible nie is considered major fault in other cultures. A great cutter with very low survivability.

The problem is that some images shown are also likely gimei. The case where specialized text cannot be replaced by search.

That looks like a typical circa 1920 collectable from a European traveler to Japan. They loved these things. It would cost some good money today, they do well at auctions and in Japan. The blade is most likely shinshinto or even very early showa.

They also did a review of the restoration work done in Nara Buddhist art museum's journal.

The cuts are deep, wide and fresh. More shinto than Kamakura cutting. Boshi is a bit weird too.

Yes, but I would argue its a bit more complicated. a. Early tsuba most likely came to the continent from Japan or at least appeared there much later and in direct proximity to Japan. b. ... and they were made by swordsmith who also made habaki. Continental swords did play with habaki for quite a long time. c. and on the continent for some reason the earliest tsuba were not round at all. but they already had "rim issues" so characteristic of the continental work. d. and then under the influence of someone (Japanese?) they became round to eggshaped. e. Around late 16th century one sees prolifiration of Japanese-style hirazukuri waki on the continent, not spreading though deep into China proper. It comes with Japanese styled tsubas, Vietnam and Korea also start using Japanese styled tsuba more and more often. f. At the same time very small number of original Chinese tsuba makes it to Japan. g. Japanese start to imitate Chinese work en masse. So at the same time you have tosho, saotome, myochin imitated everywhere around the continental coastline, often with rounded or extremely narrow (not too functional) hitsu ana, while at the same time Japanese began imitating Chinese motifs en masse.

Yeap, a common dugout guest but with long swords.

Regarding the photographs in the very beginning... Here is an early 17th century dugout find from the same region. Again, hirazukuri waki is the likely client.

That one is from a body of dugouts of quite a few Japanese-styled tsubas, late 16th to 17th century, which are found everywhere between North Korea, about 500km further north and to the east they are found as far away as Kurils and Sakhalin. For some reason while katana styled swords never gained particular traction there, hirazukuri wakizashi did, and were carried in huge quantities some as late as the 19th century. The nakago is continental (narrow, uniform width) but the fittings always tend to be Japanese styled. Quite a few have really narrow ana which are obviously useless on a waki which never had kozuka in the first place. I suspect they might be of continental origin. They are not too common, but among the collectors of such stuff they are quite popular. Also they often do not match very well the blades with which they are dug out, so must have been made some distance away. I don't put much stock into Sri-Lanka-VOC stuff, all these tsubas today are bought from Japan... Show us a Sri-Lankan dig. I think this one is Chinese, reworked in Japan.