francois2605

The new look and feel is great, I love it. We now have tons of new emoji to play with 😀 Thank you so much Brian for all the hard work put into maintaining this website. Hats off !

Nice san-mai !

I see, thanks for the explanation. This completely makes sense.

I just found out (and I'm sure others did too) this very unusual auction from ericowazamono. One can get the lot for 1,5 million dollars. That's by a huge margin the highest auction I've ever seen on the site. I can count 18 swords on the pictures. I was wondering if someone had some context about this massive sale. Is the seller suddenly stopping his activity ?

The shape of the tip is off to me. The blade has no yokote but at the same time the shape doesn't look like a regular shobu zukuri. It feels like the blade had a yokote at some stage but it got lost during a bad polish.

That's a nice one, Peter ! Thanks for posting the link. I started playing this game several weeks ago and was truly stunned by the work done by the artists in recreating the medieval Japan. I thought about mentioning the game here because of the incredible amount of details used for modelling the warriors, armors, places and weapons. This blog perfectly explains what I felt when discovering the game. It's quite rare to see an enemy wielding a jumanji yari at you in a game ! As a nihonto addict, this is the cherry on the cake. If there are other video game players on the forum, they should really give this game a try unless they are truly rebuked by insane difficulty (and I mean it). That's one of the best games I discovered those last years.

I think the tsubas are legit and worth a gamble. They definitely don't look like chinese fake to me.

See https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VvkKsOIy4_WmcalQlBG52frbtRLV3uwt/view?usp=sharing

First thing that springs to mind: that piece of brass is here to fill the empty space where a kogatana is supposed to be inserted into.

Can you please provide a complete picture of the bare blade ? The experts will need to see to whole sugata to give an opinion.

Just curious, are the signatures close enough to consider that the signature is genuine ? I'd say yes.

Thanks Brian, I just saw your post after editing mine. I eventually found "tsukuru" here Thanks also for explaining the logic, this will help for future attempts.

My 1,5 cents: You can find some of those kanji here: http://www.jssus.org/nkp/kanji_for_mei.html

I just ordered a rounded one for testing. Thanks for posting the link

"Izumi no kami" is an honorary title. See this page for more information.

Indeed, I was reading about this blade earlier this week. I'm (maybe wrongly) amazed that such an historical artifact can be found outside Japan.

Good lord, I cannot unsee this.

The target for this product is clearly not the average samurai monkey / showa22's buyer At 10 000 $ the case, what is the expected minimum price of the sword displayed inside ? 30K ? 50K ?

Very nice ! I count 8 of them that I really like. I think you're very fortunate to be close to Andy because you get to see the tsubas for what they really are. I recognize some of Andy's tsubas (I regularly visit his website) and they look better in your pictures than on the website. I know that usually pictures don't do justice to the item being sold but it's always tricky to guess what the item will look like when you have it in hands. Thanks for sharing

This blade looks like a shinogi zukuri with the hi from a kogarasu zukuri.

I uploaded the video here if you want. Edit: I used a VPN to get it.

Thanks Oshy. This is the first item I have with this style and indeed it's very appealing !

Hi all, I received today a batch of items I recently acquired. Sharing them here for others to enjoy. I would be happy to know your feedback / thoughts (if any) Thanks !

Update: I received the renovated koshirae today from Mike Hickman-Smith. Will try to post pictures of the end result here soon. Thanks to Paul B & Gakusee who recommended hiring Mike for this work.

The results posted by Peter range from 3256 to 3840 which corresponds to the lot numbers visible here and here. Where do you see lot numbers in the 1900s ?