Thank you for your comments, Marius.
I am pondering on requesting further pictures of this sword; not certain if he is on the mood and would neither like to show him much enthusiasm (read price increase).
... and thank you for the link.
Although Cathey has previously started an extensive thread on the subject in this forum, posting members are not the same and so examples posted differ; to the point that i seem to discern an example there with a similar guard pattern. Unless period smiths used to copy eachother's patterns, it appears that the sword i have posted was made by the same smith, which means i would have a smith ID ... and a date. The blade is rather different though.
LINK by courtesy bob erlandson.