I appreciate everyone's replies and time. The provenance of the estate items surrounding the swords do point to their origin being Japan; at an auction one has to consider lots of factors and try to create an unbiased story when one is about to participate in competitive bidding. Other items included WW2 Japanese army boots, uniform materials, sidearm holsters, belts, WW2 era rising sun flags, spears from several Pacific islands, Japanese art that appeared era correct and more. Lots of items from the auction were going for hundreds of dollars and a few items went for thousands, including what was probably the most beautiful Japanese room screen I've ever seen.
For what it's worth I scoured this site's threads, eBay, and the links referenced above including the Fake Swords page. In fact the way I found this forum was while I was at the estate auction I used my smartphone and googled "fake katana" and found the http://jssus.org/ page referenced above and looked through its guide before bidding started. I probably looked at pictures of over a thousand "fake" swords in detail over the past few weeks since my acquisitions, especially on eBay, and looked at pictures of hundreds of genuine Japanese forged blades as well. It's been fun. If I'm at an auction again and see swords I might take the risk again to be candid, but for now I think I'll stick with furniture, art, old toys, and comic books.
My next goal is to see if they're, like Brian says they might be, mid-20th century blades. Honestly I think they could be used as excellent cutters. Everything has value for somebody. I'd still like to be able to put them in the hands of an expert to really get a good solid opinion and appraisal.
If nothing else, for the purposes of members of this forum, the pictures might be educational. I'll take good pictures of the other blade and post them here. I just got a new macro lens for my camera I've been wanting to try out.
Thanks,
Allen