Ethnographic Arms & Armour - View Single Post

ariel · 26th August 2005, 05:39 PM

Having been extremely annoyed by the proliferation of Chinese junk on e-bay, I asked myself : How bad is the problem?
Well, the total number of items termed "sword" (titles and descriptions) was 49,866
When I removed terms "china, chinese, japan, japanese, samurai, katana, ninja, dy" (the most frequent descriptions of the junk), the number had fallen to 24,764
I realize that some legitimate katanas and japanese blades were also not counted, but their total number must have been less than 100-200 at the maximum.
It means that fully 50% of all swords on e-bay are Chinese junk. No wonder I felt bad..... Even paranoids have real enemies!

26th August 2005, 05:39 PM	#1
ariel Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 5,503	An experiment Having been extremely annoyed by the proliferation of Chinese junk on e-bay, I asked myself : How bad is the problem? Well, the total number of items termed "sword" (titles and descriptions) was 49,866 When I removed terms "china, chinese, japan, japanese, samurai, katana, ninja, dy" (the most frequent descriptions of the junk), the number had fallen to 24,764 I realize that some legitimate katanas and japanese blades were also not counted, but their total number must have been less than 100-200 at the maximum. It means that fully 50% of all swords on e-bay are Chinese junk. No wonder I felt bad..... Even paranoids have real enemies!