Welcome aboard.  

Good to know. Love this forum. Dave  

Welcome to the forum..   Looking forward to seeing your collection   Best   Leigh 

Welcome!

My British part is slowly growing…..slowly😁 some RAF stuff and a Pegasus patch  

Hello everyone, I am a beginner collector from Japan. I started collecting military items a few years ago, mainly focusing on U.S. ALICE equipment. I also have some items related to the Yugoslav Wars and other military gear, although my collection is still small. I am not a soldier or law enforcement, just an enthusiast and collector. Since I only speak Japanese, I use machine translation (such as Google Translate and ChatGPT) to communicate. I appreciate your understanding. I am interested in learning more, sharing information, and asking questions about unidentified items or whether something is original or reproduction. Thank you!

People Tell me this is authentic, and others telling me it might be a Chinese reproduction. Can anybody help me out with verifying the authenticity of this sword? I bought it from an estate sale with other military swords. In my opinion, it looks authentic, but I’m really just not too familiar with Japanese swords. Thanks for your help!

I just noticed the first few inches at the tip of the blade of the one without the hooked quillion is magnetized.  Was this a common practice with certain manufacturers?  

A worker places the metal insignia on  pith helmets, Luftwaffe in this case, see the pile of Luftwaffe Eagles there, possible this is at Odenwälder Faserstoff-GmbH  at  Amorbach, a small town in Lower Franconia, this company is the one that had ORL as it's hallmark, they seem to the main manufacturer of the 1940 pattern one.

That is a really interesting veteran lapel button.   One will see some odd award combination on these civilian button hole mountings.  In my experience, anything goes with these lapel mountings.  The dual IC awards are neat.  

The sword looks OK to me but there are some very good fakes coming out of China for the last few years.  So be careful and get a return policy if you can.  I can't tell more from the photos I am afraid.