I am just now recovering from one of the greatest mistakes of my collecting career, the purchase of a book that balances itself somewhere between laughable and absurd.
Captivated by the cover art of the book
ANTIQUE SWORDS AND DAGGERS, whose cover photo was seemingly dedicated largely to legit ethnographic pieces, I made the plunge, paid the cost of an all-too-expensive book...and lived to regret it.
The book is authored/edited by Mircea Veleanu, who either has very little knowledge of blades, thinks 'research' is only a
noun and never a
verb, or has no idea of the value of a US dollar....or perhaps a combination of the three.
As I opened the book for a quick browse, the first page I came to was full of pics of TOURIST Dayak mandaus, described as original and 19th Cent., priced in the upper 100s and 1000s!!! Once I got my jaw to reattach after it had dropped to the floor, I realised that there was, indeed, page after page of such photos of tourist quality swords from various cultures appraised at ridiculous values.
Sadly, mixed in are some legitimately good pieces, those appraised at largely even more absurd prices, not even remotely close to what they would actually fetch on any knowledgable market. In some cases legit pieces are valued
below those that we might call 'toys'.
The only good thing to be said of this book is the quality of some of the photos, especially of the legit pieces. Since I am no expert/collector of several types of swords visited in the book, I will not dare to say what percentage of the items photoed are of tourist quality or just out right fakes, but among ethnograghic pieces I would say that at least 50% or more are post 1900(that's being kind!) or are tourist pieces, mislabled, or just out right fakes.
I am amazed that this book was put together as a serious project and even more amazed that a publisher published it with apparently no content research, and/or knowledge, or
care, of the correctness of the content.
Now, why does all of the concern me? Why do I sound even more pissy than usual so early in the morning? Well fellas, if this books comes into wide circulation as a sellers' price guide or, Allah-forbid, some collector's manual, then the field we all love so much will be horribly polluted, both in quality of goods offered by well intentioned(and maybe the not-so-well-intentioned) vendors selling tourist quality pieces as legit...and claiming he/she has a book to back them up, AND in perceived values of pieces whether good or bad! Even more sadly, imagine the beginning collector using this book as a 'starter's guide', getting all excited about his new hobby, and then bidding $1000 on a painted and shell-laden tourist toy Dayak mandau on Ebay!!
In the hands of even the best intentioned dealer or collector this book is dangerous and misleading beyond belief, especially if perceived as even remotely accurate. Let's hope we don't all pay the price for a poorly thought out and even more poorly researched "book of horrors".
