Dear Jim McDougall,
I was just kidding.
My preception of the market is a little bit different - these swords are actually _very_ hard to find in Caucasus itself - years of wars, gun control and selling abroad took their toll. The reason these guys tend to be so damn expensive in my opinion is that Tsar used to send all the duelists (including famous poets like Lermontov) to Caucasus as a punishment. Naturally, after a few days there they would would start writing poems about gurdas, bulat kindjals and other local trinkets.
So I would guess in all ex-USSR it's pretty much a semi-fetish item that connects people to the glorious XIX century.
I'm sorry if I insulted anybody,
K.Rivkin
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