Hello everyone,
Greetings from the Philippines. I am a collector though I do concentrate on collecting Cold War US and Soviet stuff. Anyway I recently purchased a Shin Gunto I believee to be a type 98. I am an absolute newbie but I can already tell whether a sword is fake or not thanks to this forum. In fact it was research that led me here. However, I may have to rely on more experienced gunto collectors’ knowledge on this particular one.
Several months ago a ukay2x (used clothes) seller showed me a couple of gunto pictures from her mobile phone and offered to sell what she called a “Naval gunto” to me. I immediately jumped on the deal because the koshirae looked real, the tsuka was wrapped in some sort of white cloth, and it had the “age” look on it, especially the leather. And the price wasn’t too expensive.
However, when the gunto finally got here I found some things in this sword to be quite odd. The tsuba and spacers are different. The washer is not available. The habaki looks different as well... First time I have seen this kind of habaki. I did see a post on this forum about Unique open work tsuba but this particular tsuba feels different and that it doesn’t have the 4 holes right where it should be. And not only is the nakago ugly there is no signature on too. Although aware that there are shin gunto without signature, I just want your opinion on this one. I hope I don’t have one of those “Collaborator” swords. The sword came directly from Japan. I got this from a very reputable Japanese surplus/ukay2x (used clothes) store.
Can anybody help me ID this sword?
Thanks in Advance,
John Barry N. Nuico
