I love a good mystery, except one where I never find the ending.
The crude forging on the blade doesn't bother me so much as identifying it as Philippine; in a previous post on this site, I provided("Philippine Axes, Bontok,"), examples of blades with similar forging marks and to fashion a steel socket must take some degree of skill.A point that bothered me and you rightly brought out was the wrap of the handle, which kind of puts a Titanic-size iceberg in the path of my theory.
The auction also had Eastern and Western Indian artifacts, so if we wanted to get really absurd, I could ask could it be a Tlingit blade........but I would never do that.
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