The Falchion or Malchus, the rarest medieval sword

[cornelistromp]

Originally Posted by Swordfish

You are surely right, a proofed! provenance is always good. But how many medieval swords appear at auction with a provenance? Very very few!

The two swords in my thread: Early European arms captured by the Ottomans, were sold at auction without provenance. Are they therefore fakes? surely not! If genuine swords were catalogued as 19th century, the better it is for the experienced collector, to acquire swords for a moderate price. If a 19th century sword is catalogued as genuine, you can make no scientific test before you bit for it. Only your experienced eye can help you.

Best

it is not solely the 19th century reproductions but the recently made forgeries which are auctioned off as original which can represent a problem.
These swords are without a provenance or have a faked non-verifiable provenance.
The only way to deal with certainty about the authenticity is to show that the sword is or is not made ​​out of bloomery steel, so steel with inclusions of slag FE2SIO4, the only ferrous material available in the middle ages, this can only be detected at the microscopic level and not with an experienced eye only.
Luckily it does not happen on a large scale and of course the majority of the swords without provenance offered by renowned auction houses is OK. But each case is one too many.

best,