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Old 3rd March 2020, 10:40 AM   #11
Mickey the Finn
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Join Date: Dec 2017
Posts: 90
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Yes, the five luk keris is the one I was referring to. Sometimes I'm suspicious without cause. Sometimes I'm overly trusting without any reason to be so. Two separate instances comes to mind when I took something for granted, or made a baseless assumption. After taking delivery of the articles, I discovered that things which I had assumed or taken for granted were not, in fact, so. On neither occasion did I say anything about the matter, because I was aware that I'd not adhered to what might be considered the two cardinal rules for the buyer (of anything): 1) Ask questions first. 2) Buyer beware.
"Fabricación nacional": allows the buyer to deceive himself.
If the buyer does not ask, "Manufactured in what nation"? he has no business complaining if he finds a label that says "Made in China" instead of the "Hecho en chile" which he expected. It's possible the vendor might lie outright if asked a direct question.
About 26 years ago I was in a store shopping for a certain article. The shopkeeper informed me of a heavily discounted model. My first question was, "What's wrong with it"? The shopkeeper denied that anything was wrong with it, and appeared offended. I bought the article, and 26 years later, I still haven't found a single thing wrong with it.
I've acquired keris billed as antique which I was (and still am) convinced were made no earlier than two years before I acquired them. One was marketed as a Balinese dhapur Balebang, with a kembang kacang about halfway down the wilah. It doesn't fit any dhapur in any book I've ever consulted. I bought it because I thought it was interesting, and I have no regrets. If anything is marketed as having belonged to "a senior abdi dalem of the Solokarta Court", that's a different matter altogether, and I'll pass on it, sight unseen.
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