Thats crazy! the owner must have been a togishi or a barber or something to make an investment like that.
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I have no idea what stones used to sell for in Japan back then but I doubt that anybody paid half a year salary for this one in 1965. Don't get me wrong, the stones is pretty clean, no lines, no cracks, has all the corners but no way anybody paid that price for it. Just my opinion.
I got a question if i may, so many pictures of jnats, all still have stamps on them, the ohzuku i picked up just arrived and i know that lapping it is gonna remove that stamp, so why do 95% of jnat pics still have a stamp?
are people buying them to re-sell?
I usually take pics before I lap mine. I also don't always lap if the stone comes flat and sometimes the stamps last somewhat through the first lapping or so. I think most of what you are seeing is initial pics so people have documentation of the stamps before lapping flat.
That was my other theory, i guess its just the way the world is today that took my mind straight to the buy/sell thought, i remember seeing a large CF hone on ebay that sold for about £40 within a week it was back on ebay sliced into two, both halves £40 each hehe.
Been trying out a piece of unstamped koma from Alex, 190x65mm, lots of testing! Of course, being unstamped the question is, 'Is it really koma?'. TL;DR, it checks all the boxes, both polishing and sharpening.
I've got a decent collection of both vintage and current-generation koma, Asano-stamped, from other companies, and this one falls right in the middle on sharpening fineness, and it produced a darned good kasumi when I gave it a spin on the side of my trusty thinned and polished Masahiro Virgin Carbon. It's also fast and cuts wear-resistant SLD semi-stainless very well.
Good stuff indeed.
Cheers, Steve
Steve, I have a piece of unstamped Botan from Alex and it has the same look on top.
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