@ Erik: Thank you for posting this one. Now we have an example from before 1903! As we know Bataks allready made touristic items at the end of the 19th century, this is not the case here.
I don't think VOC marked blades where allready seen as treasures in swordcollectors collections.
I'm not sure about the provenance of this one.
A long time ago I copied the picture from a Dutch museum database. However I wasn't smart enough to write down from which database I copied it from.
I can not find so quickly where I got it from, but it's worth showing.
As far as I can remember, I thought it was coming out of the famous Visser collection, but I'm not sure.
Maurice