Fakes that I have bought

(So far) 

Unfortunately the world of antique collecting in general is plagued by clever, and not so clever, fakes that are sold on to unsuspecting buyers, often for serious sums of money. Sometimes they are sold knowing that they are fake, and sometimes they are sold by well-meaning sellers with little knowledge.

This goes back to very early days of collecting when Japanese craftsmen would add false signatures of famous smiths to their own work in the hope of commanding a higher price (known as gimei). Now there are whole workshops that seem to churn out an endless supply of modern pieces designed to look old.

When I first started collecting tsuba I was really ignorant about these possibilities. The tsuba with a the figure of a minor deity (or something like that) riding the carp, below, was one of my early purchases from an antique/militaria shop. I thought it was nice, and I am generally a sucker for wave patterns, so I bought it. It was only later, watching a video by Ford Halam on YouTube that I begun to get suspicious. (I should note that I don’t have any reason to think that the shop knew that it was fake, it is likely to be a genuine mistake).

Once you get your eye in, then the more obvious fakes become easy to spot. However, I still get surprised by the sophistication of some of those on the market.

There are various ways to check that will help a newcomer to this field, with one of the simplest being a reverse image search on Google (or wherever you get your search results) to see if there are a flood of identical pieces out there, or if they are bing sold on one of the dropshipping suppliers. It’s not foolproof, but it is a start. You can also join the Nihonto Message Board and read up on all the fakes that members have found, while also absorbing images of very good tsuba posted there.

The pictures below are there to illustrate some of the features that you can look out for, but they are by no means exhaustive.

Caveat emptor.