What would a WWII Japanese officer sword be worth?

[golok]

Someone showed me a World War II samurai sword recently but declined to put a figure on its worth.

From the looks of it, it looks authentically old. It is definitely not a foot soldier's sword which is usually black in colour and drab in appearance.

This one looks aged. Light yellow in colour. It has rust spots all over the blade. The interesting thing is that it has some Japanese characters on the blade, near the hilt. In fact, the characters look like Chinese characters instead of Japanese.

I suspect the characters could be the name of the family or the owner of the sword.

The years of neglect have discoloured the scabbard and the handle.

So how much would the price tag be if the sword is authentic?
The man who owned the sword couldn't have been a high-ranking officer because the sword is rather plain.

 

[dewingrm]

Generally Japanese WWII swords are not worth that much money, they often sell on eBay for a couple of hundred. Some of them are not well made blades while others were family heirlooms. Price really depends on the age and the smith who made the blade. If you want to get a good professional answer post this question on swordforum.com on the Nihonto forum, there are experts there who can answer all of your questions and probably even give you a price range.

Ryan

 

[Ken Cook]

The truth of the matter is, that no one can really give you a good answer without seeing the sword or at least some very good quality detailed pictures.

See if you can get some digital pics taken and post them here, I'm sure that Robert Marotz can help you out.

 

[Robert Marotz]

Hiya...

Well, the prices range on WWII swords from a few hundred to well over a thousand...but...

There's no way to be absolutely certain what kind of blade you're dealing with shy of taking detailed photos of a variety of portions of the blade. Given that it's heavily rusted, we'd need much more precise an idea of what it could be to determine if it's really worth sending to a polisher to restore. If it happens to be an older blade of quality or a modern but well-made sword, it could theoretically be worth a *lot* more after a full polish than it is now.

If you could provide us with some photos, it would be most helpful