Quote Originally Posted by DaveW View Post
I agree on the stamp, I doubt it's real, but my view of them is that so few are real (unless they're full hatanaka with box and the piece of rock has aspects that you rarely see - in a good way) that I don't even care if they're fake if the stone is good. As long as I don't have to pay real stamp price for a fake one.

I'd bet every stone that I have with a maruka stamp is fake, and I have several with an old faded looking stamp like that. Some of them are really good, though!
I paid for the stamp to a certain extent, but I sure like the stone. And it's quite a pure Kiita, with the added Nashiji bonus.. anyway, as you say, none of that matters. Shape, stamps, colors, patterns - they don't hone.

The thing about this stone and the likes of it (I have a few others, same feel) is that it isn't super hard. It's hard alright, but there's that velvety feel to it, like an Escher. At the same time, there's no auto-slurry and it's really tight, you feel the cutting action even on straight water, it doesn't glaze or get sticky at all, and of course, there's zero scratchiness. A tad harder might be a little easier, but I'm not complaining at all. My kind of rock definitely, I don't like the ones that feel hard as glass or marble. Like, when I see an ad for the stone stating 5+++, I turn away immediately. This is probably an 8 on a scale of 1 to 10.