Shibata Ka gendaito?

[chrisf]

Being sold by 'holytoledou 1',what appears to be genuine Shibata Ka gendaito,thought it might interest gendaito fans as his swords are rarely seen.

[SwordGuyJoe]

Link?

[Grey Doffin]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Japanese-WWII-S ... 2320359f2a

 

Grey

[cabowen]

Wow, it sold for nearly $8K! Sight unseen....amazing! Never mind that, no matter what, it needs a polish, etc.....add another $4K, and your in for about $12K.....crazy people out there!

[george trotter]

Wow indeed!

I watched the last couple of minutes of this auction and thought I was hallucinating! I hope the buyer enjoys it...I wish him well.

Is there a bit of a mystique about Shibata Ka? I have never had one in hand, but I had one by his teacher/patron... Sato Shigenori...a nice blade.

Why I ask is that I recently saw a nice blade by Nakata Kanehide (2M yen rated smith by Tokuno) go for $4000, and this Ka (1.5M yen) goes for twice as much...what's going on? Is it just rarity?

Regards,

[SwordGuyJoe]

Wow!!! I was giving it thought, but maybe at 1,500 (maybe). Bad pics, uncertain results after polish, and a good smith made me think this was ridiculous. If I was a betting man, we can all expect to see this listed again. There was a shrine gendaito listed a few weeks ago and it sold for a similar price. It was in GOOD/GREAT polish and I was hugely interested, but it sold for about $8k. About one week later it came back for sale. I'd bet this one comes back too.

[cabowen]

I noticed a blade on ebay recently that the seller was calling a "shrine sword" without any documentation-wonder if it was the same one???

 

Shibata Ka was more or less self-taught. He was from a wealthy family and was involved in politics. He had an excellent collection of swords and was able to study, research, and experiment. He made an effort to reproduce the koto jigane and some of his work shows this well. He didn't make a lot of swords, mostly tanto. I have seen a fair number of his blades and they are usually very good, though the shape of his katana is often on the "rustic" side, no doubt due to his lack of professional training. Nonetheless, some of the blades I have seen have been very nice. I owned a 29" Ka, made to commemorate the Nanking massacre, special order, blah blah blah. I bought it on ebay for $4000 a good many years ago. I had it polished, and it turned out excellent. It was the longest Ka I have seen. When I imported it into Japan, the shinsa team all made notes about it and commented on how rare it was. In any case, since Ka was not a Tokyo smith, I sold it. As I recall, it sold for $10,000. Considering the polish, etc., came to nearly $5000, I made a princely profit of $1000. I sold it as soon as I received it back from polish because I knew if I spent any time with it I would never sell it....

 

This sword has potential, but I doubt, even in polish, it would sell for more than $10,000. I have seen a few Ka blades with kizu. I would be really upset if I spent $8K and found it had flaws....ouch....Then again, to some people, $8K is pocket money, easy come, easy go!

 

To me, a reasonable price would have been around $3K, maybe $4K. Jo sun (assuming the seller measured it correctly), special order, by a well known smith and all, it is something rare and should be valued at twice what a run of the mill RJT blade would fetch. In polish, it should be worth $8K-$9K...Or about what the buyer paid.....

[SwordGuyJoe]

Chris, you said it best "assuming". I would have no issues spending that kind of money on a Ka, but not like that. Well too many unknowns and too many assumptions. We could all look at a blade see the potential, but potential comes with risk. Due to that risk, it's not realistic to spend 8k and then still need to drop $4k on polish, shirasaya, and habaki. At best you'd break even and that's a bit of a stretch in today's environment. If I decide to turn a blade in a month or five years I hope to make a few bucks on it, this has no room for profit.

[cabowen]

It has nothing but downside, that is the bottom line....

[Bruno]

If you look at the bids details, you can see mainly 2 bidders were playing together.

 

For a total of 24 bids only 9 different bidders and most of them at the very beginning.

 

I would not be surprised to see it appear again.

[Jacques]

Hi,

 

Have a look at the kissaki (each side) strange isn't it ?

[Brian]

No, it is not strange. The pics are taken at completely different angles.

There doesn't have to be a conspiracy with everything. It is what it is, and fetched what someone wanted to pay for it. Maybe someone sniped high and met another bidder who had also gone in high. Doesn't matter really, the seller didn't hype it up and it just proves that nothing slips past the collectors on eBay. Nothing else to debate really.

 

Brian

[jason y]

I know that it will never be back on eBay for sure... it will be out of country very soon.

[chrisf]

I guess the bottom line is where do you find another? RJT swords are relatively easy to find and are still coming out of the woodwork but in several years of trawling ebay and internet sites I can recall only two other katana by Ka for sale,nearest I've got was a Shigenori I missed out on in a Scottish auction and a Horikawa Kunitake that I recently owned.

Not only a rare sword but a very interesting character who made it which will account in part for the strong interest shown,much the same as with Kurihara Hikosaburo whose swords invariably are more expensive than those of more highly rated (Tokuno) gendai tosho.

[Jean]

http://www.nihonto.ca/shibata-ka/index.html

[cabowen]

I know that blade well and had it polished. It wasn't his best work.....The polisher had to spend a lot of time with it to do what he could to improve the shape....Not a chance it would receive more than Hozon papers, at least in this lifetime....