I saw this auction too late. I won't even say what this went for today... go look if you are curious. Even though it was too much blade for my purposes, this is the kind of thing you snatch up out of principle for someone else in the dojo. I get the dubious nature of the blade, but still... at that price with those fittings? My untrained eye is seeing more than a couple elements of that blade that give me warm fuzzies. The work on the fittings was easily worth a grand... Yeesh.