In defense of Rick's statement i will say that i believe at least 95% of the keris dealers who sell regularly on eBay from the Indonesian/Malay area are con men!!! They attempt to sell newly made keris as old pieces. Sometimes they are actually selling fairly high quality new pieces and i think they might be more successful if they were smart enough to employ a bit of honesty. As Rick stated, he PURPOSEFULLY collects new pieces, as do many others, but i am sure he has no desire to collect from a dealer who would attempt to deceive him on the tangguh of a blade and therefore prefers to buy his new keris from someone who sells it as a new keris.
Now, he's your out gentlemen, i can think of a very few eBay keris dealers who ARE honest and upstanding dealers. Maybe you are one of them.
But believe me, they are few and far between.I will not name them here, the good or the bad. I have no desire to disparage anyones name nor do i intend to do a commercial advertisement for the good ones. I strongly believe that a certain number of less scrupulous dealers do operate here on this forum in order to subtly solicite sales and/or manipulate our thinking on the subject. Call me paranoid if you will.
Frankly i don't care. I know who you are and your actions are being less and less tolerated on this forum. I would like to see us return to more civil and academic discussion of keris on this forum. Dealers are, of course, welcome to join in that discussion, but let's all stop playing games with each other, eh?
I would personally welcome your input and knowledge, but not when it is formulated to manipulate sales for yourself or your friends. And believe me when i say some of you have been all too obvious about this
Now DhenTal, you wrote:
"I can suppose whose the dealer in Singapore that what you mean, but I don't say in this great forum.
I just tell you that in his site, he posted some a new kris too (indeed fake) that he said it was old piece and made by good iron... but, I don't think so.
Don't you guess that him kris, spesifically javanese kris, is a great kris.
For me, some of him javanese kris just a fake kris which sell for high price."
We are not stupid here, and while you are "supposing" so is everyone else. We all know the on-line dealer you are talking about and i find your unnamed attack on him to be far worse than anything Rick suggested because you, sir, are singling out a specific dealer and disbaraging his good name. And you give NO FACTS to support your claim. That you haven't actually used his name does not matter since many if not all of us here are smart enough to know just who you mean and i don't believe you will find much sympathy among your fellow forumites for this attack on a very well respected forumite.
Boswego, i would be more than happy to send you a list of good dealers, so check for a message soon.
