I started collecting antique Japanese swords and fittings many years ago. Like watch collecting, the hobby tends to attract OC types with fanatical attention to detail and things having to be 'right'.
I have had a lot of pleasure in finding old swords that pernickety collectors won't touch because they are dirty, the fittings have been damaged or are missing. Sometimes I have come across an old sword that looks pretty bad at first glance, but under the dirt I could see potential. And frankly most of my pleasure lies in restoring the piece, rather than simply improving it to make money.
A few months ago I was offered such a project piece, which I put away for a rainy day. It had mismatched hilt fittings, a rusty and grimy tsuba, a horrible collection of washers for the tsuba, which was loose on the blade anyway, and a knocked about scabbard.
The good things were that the blade was still in good Japanese polish without rust, it was genuinely old (I considered it circa 1500 or even earlier) and it was priced at only a quarter of market value. After I bought it a collector friend said he used to own the sword and still had a copy of the official NTHK certificate attributing the blade to a sword making clan operating in the 1500s.
That was before the virus arrived. What a perfect project for working at home.
I can't show you 'before' pictures unfortunately, but here it is after returning it to how it would have looked hundreds of years ago.
A closer image of the restored tsuba, with proper washers.
