ryanvango

@Curran I'm down in pittsburgh haha. so neighbors. the sword is actually with my dad up near scranton. when we first tried getting them looked at I think we met with someone from the NY group, but outside of their regular meetings. it was 2 guys we met at I think a community college in new york. but they were mostly looking at the swords themselves. unfortunately weren't able to learn much outside of "yeah you'll need to spend a few grand to get them polished before anyone can say anything." Thank you so much for that detailed answer, though! I forgot how much fun it was to dig in to this stuff. And I swear every person I talk has something new and awesome to tell me. It's wild to think that just a PIECE of a sword can have more story baked in to it than almost anything us westerners are used to dealing with. I'll try to get better photos next time I'm back in that area.

does anyone have a resource for getting them authenticated or anything? I know some can have papers but I'm not 100% what that means or entails. I am in pennsylvania

bahaha I actually joined way back in 2013 because I was doing a bunch of research on them at the time. They're my dad's swords and we tried to get them looked at back then, but not a ton learned sadly. I just started thinking about them again recently, and someone mentioned getting the tsuba looked at because apparently there are collectors just of that, and its possible the furniture had been swapped out over the years. I appreciate the leads! I'll get to digging! thanks a lot!

Not a ton to go on especially for the second one. These are photos I took when I was visiting my dad. I was asking someone about the actual swords, and someone told me to get these looked at if at all possible. not sure if someone could give me an idea of how to find out more about them, or if there's a process for getting them authenticated. both of them are attached to swords that are at least 300 years old, with the more wire-y one having an ichimonji school gold inlay on the inside. sorry that's the best I got as I don't really know much about this art form. any help is greatly appreciated though!