Swagman

So it's looking like a faked signature. Well, I bought the sword without any idea what if anything was under the tsuka. I bought it because I liked it and will continue to. I probably will have it polished in the future and will be keeping it. So I'm content. Thanks for your help and information. I have another sword that I also bought recently and will post pictures of the signature soon.

Hope that these are clear.

Thanks Steve.

I'll try to get some good pictures of the blade. it's well out of polish and does have some fine rust pitting, nothing that won't come out though. It is not at all tired either.

Good day, I recently bought this sword in an auction. It came without a saya and most of the tsuka wrap was missing. It did have good looking fuchi & kashira. When it arrived the tsuka was tight and rusted on. I'm sure that it had not been off for many years. Finally I got it off without damaging anything and was pleasantly surprised to see the signature. Just the problem now of reading it. Could someone please help.

I did look at pack& send as an option but they to were extremely expensive.

I have bought a few swords from the USA this year with mixed results from shipping companies. The first four came with USPS from the USA side, Parcel Force UK picked up the delivery. According to the Parcel Force documents shipping was at my risk. I have had a further four shipments that route and with the same conditions. I have not had any problems other than stress from the UK border agency who seem impossible to contact. I have had one shipment via UPS who did offer insurance but they were very expensive. The last and most recent was via FedEx and here I offer a warning. I bought a 16th century Katana from an auction, it was shipped with the instructions that it was clearly antique, traditionally made and certainly more than 100 years old. UK border agency detained it but FedEx didn't notify me of this until 14 days after it was detained. UK border agency wrote to me, the letter arrived on the final day of the time allowed to question the detainment.I employed a specialist solicitor and with help from a friend and sword collector/ dealer of national reputation managed to get it passed back to FedEx for delivery. FedEx then refused to ship the sword to me stating that they don't allow shipping of any weapons and would be returning it to the sender. With the assistance of the solicitor, they agreed to allow me to collect it from their clearance department. FedEx were extremely difficult to deal with as despite presenting a UK phone number in reality the calls all routed through a call centre in the USA and I never managed to get the same person twice. Their customer support in the UK is not in the same place as their distribution centre so it's not easy to get any information to pass from one to the other. The conclusion now for me is that I will not use FedEx again.