Yes Jussi, what you’ve said is certainly true:- if one were to focus only on picture keris, it is possible that one could buy some comparatively expensive keris that were not what they pretended to be. However, unfortunately this is true of virtually all attractive older keris.
The talented craftsmen of jawa have been busy for over 100 years in altering unattractive older blades and turning them into much more attractive blades. One of the most popular alterations is to make a hujan mas pamor out of a wos wutah pamor; same for bendo sagodo; in fact same for any surface manipulated pamor, but hujan mas is probably the most popular because it is a very popular pamor.
Tuban blades were often very big, heavy blades, but these days it is extremely rare to find come across one of these old “super size” Tuban blades, and they have become extremely valuable because of their rareity.
What happened to all the others? Used up over the last 100-150 years by turning them into picture keris, waved keris, keris with fancy surface manipulated pamor.
So the fact of the matter is that anybody who has a focus on old keris, simply because they are old, has an extremely high possibility of buying something that has been fiddled with --- and it is not at all easy to always pick these changelings, even with much experience. I’ve been tricked more than a few times, as have some very highly respected keris experts whom I know and have known.
Actually some of the picture keris alterations are worth keeping as masterpieces. I doubt that there has been anybody during the last 40 years or so who has been able to do this sort of alteration convincingly.
So its not just novice collectors who are at risk Jussi, its all of us are. I guess that is one of the major reasons for the high popularity of kemardikan keris, and sky high prices of non-noman keris. At least with these types of keris you can be pretty certain of exactly what you are getting, and quality is normally high.
Focus on older keris and it is absolutely certain that no matter how experienced one is, a percentage of one’s acquisitions will be changelings, no matter if one focuses on older keris in general, or only older picture keris. But my suggestion was for picture keris, and probably the biggest percentage of picture keris in the market place are kemardikan.
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