Where to buy authentic shinken/nihonto?

I think the issue that bothered you was their policy that there should be no discussion about items that are being sold. I know there have been multiple issues over the same thing in the past at NMB. Sometimes there are slips and discussion on sale items does not get moderated in time.

There are members on that forum that caution buyers when looking at eBay items. I generally advice the same. However sometimes you can get decent deals from Japanese eBay dealers too, if you know what you are looking for and know what you want. The items that are listed to eBay from Japan are mostly listed for sale at Yahoo JP at the same time. Sellers like daimyou54eb as you mentioned can have very interesting items sometimes. I remember wanting a naginata he had but as it takes me several years to save up for an antique it sold lot sooner I got the money for it. Similar thing happened with an item that koushuya had listed.

However the caution is that often the items sold at eBay that are from Japan can be in quite poor condition. The item that I was looking had few rust spots and it was worn in general. I was fine with those problems but I know many collectors are not.

Also to be noted that some members at Nihonto Message Board collect at very high level, so it can be difficult for them to drop down to level where an average buyer might be.

Except for his "anchor" papered pieces, which seldom sell, Komonjo has low-start open auctions.  At least, if you pay too much for one of his notorious mystery blades, he didn't set the price.  There is, of course, the rumor that he may sometimes exercise "retro reserve", and refund rather than ship if something sells too cheaply for his tastes.  I don't consider him a model "good eBayer", but what ethics he has might make him a pinnacle of virtue compared to some Chinese eBay sword sellers.    

NMB is fine-- both as a resource for good information/knowledge and also for selling/buying from the classifieds.

All I gotta say is stuff like sbg-sword-store.sword-buyers-guide.com/product942.html wouldn’t be good for a martial artist either. Not after a buffing wheel changed the geometry(note how in images where there is incident lighting the what’s left of the shinogi ji is wobbly as hell) and removed so much of the hagane. To get rid of some harmless surface rust they reduced its appearance... and functionality to that of a 100$ replica. And they have the nerve to say buffing a sword is okay, as if losing the geometry won’t ruin everything right down to the function.

One thing I’ve marveled at is how stuff that looks pretty in a nihonto is what makes it functional: like soshu swords with their hard nie hamons and mist utsuri that makes them springy. Those gem like effects are in fact a result of it ideal hardness control for cutting.

Conversely, benign stuff like being out of polish notwithstanding, stuff that wrecks a swords look often wrecks function, like loss of hamon, or like the above case where losing the geometry it needed for cutting through an object and withstanding shocks, along with the bulk of its hagane has effectively ended its life as a functional weapon. That’s why I think regardless of what our goals are, decent sword care, and supporting people who practice it is a goal we can all get behind.

Well if you thought the home of the fake Ieyasu sword, the home of worthless buffed nihonto, and all their crazy advice is fine then it is fit to use them as the benchmark when grading NMB and eBay. Does seem odd to condone that while claiming the other is a fraud and criminal and as of yet, not having produced evidence.

I’m probably blind but could you tell me what those Hozon papers are if not a paper and provenance? It’s for the 1000$ Koto sword btw.


So you’re saying that professional dealer, like the ones you talked up, made fake Hozon papers, drilled a sword and sold fraud at a loss in NMB? Interesting, on what evidence?
More likely, Hozon papers are sometimes Hozon papers and sometimes older people downsizing let newbies have stuff cheap.
So for the record, I do not endorse using antique blades but I can understand where our friend is coming from. Most production swords, especially (according to Jensen) horrifically expensive production L6 super steel break from anything even tatami mats often ruin L6. Even conventional steel production blades, less apt to have failed heat treatment, still break from anything and CAS has responded to a hoard of angry people who payed a ton for lemons by claiming all swords are supposed to break from plastic gallon jugs. Then yeah, I can understand why faced between the choice of a hideous and pathetically preforming L6 production, or a no more expensive battle tested sword, a survivor of hitting hard objects and being hit by hard objects, would have more appeal.

Mind you, antique swords are by virtue of being antique a dying breed, and no more shinshinto, shinto, or koto swords will ever be made. So yes, I could never bring myself to reduce their numbers via the accelerated wear that would do, but nonetheless, I can understand the urge to trust the real deal over replica CAS says can’t handle gallon jugs. The solution would probably be to get a Clark or Komonojo but who am I to tell others how to live their life. Especially when he’s a koryu expert who knows how to use swords and I don’t, and likely using it the way previous owners did.

I would not say that swords CAS categorically says are unsafe to use on plastic gallons are same. Modernity without skill disappoints. Yes, modern nihonto aren’t my interest, but Clark and others make good swords because they’re experts at Japanese style heat treatment and geometry, not because they use the same alloys that fail Hanwei. Lot of production can use sci-fi metals but so long as their oil quenching (itself the easier to use but less hardening/effective spinoff to water quenching) is poorly controlled and leaves large patches of unhardened edge, they’re liable to roll an entire edge from anything. And what bothers me is those cost more than antiques lots of times. And unfortunately truly great non Japanese swords like Clark’s aren’t cheap either.

Speaking about buying cool antique swords that are being sold by alleged criminal rackets(what our friend says NMB is)... NMB is selling a Juyo Katana, a masterpiece from Kamakura era Bizen, for no more than the price of that chewed up, half out of polish, questionably valid green papered sword BOJ mistranslated to Ieyasu’s smith. A Juyo katana at sub 30K is a good deal. Meanwhile the guy behind BOJ will tell you katana start at Juyo prices but that sorry daisho he sells... well you could get those, without the fake Ieyasu claims from Daimyo for about 2000$. The leadership behind BOJ should own up to the fact depreciated green papers are infamously unreliable and they mistranslated theirs to English to a more famous smith than the papers say.

Anyways if I had a spare 30K, I’d drop it on that Juyo since you’re buying one of the best of the bests according to the NBTHK. Me though, I gotta settle for cheap Hozon katanas.