Sword 10 (Florida eBay Sword)

1/7/2017

Refreshing my memory about the narrative arc of #Swordgate yesterday, I was reminded that I never produced a blog post about Sword 10 (Florida eBay). This sword was spotted for sale on eBay in January of 2016. It was offered by a store in Stuart, Florida. As of this writing, the original listing for the item is still available here.

The seller was clearly trying to capitalize on the interest generated by the appearance of the "Roman sword" on The Curse of Oak Island, asking an even thousand dollars to purchase the sword outright.

Screenshot of the eBay listing for Sword 10.

There are many photos of the sword, some with a tape measure. By description and the photos, the sword is almost certainly a copper alloy sword. We classed this sword as a "type CS" along with Swords 7(Span), 12 (Cvet), 13 (Alejandro), and 15 (Friocero). My working hypothesis is that this generation of swords falls between the so-called "J" swords (e.g., Italian eBay sword, Nova Scotia sword, etc.) and the iron alloy Design Toscano swords. Type CS swords are (presumably) copper alloy swords with relatively "clean" blades missing the suite of anomalies that we're using to define the J type. A close comparison of the images we have may be useful in recognizing commonalities and variation among the "CS" swords.

I've entered more information on this sword into the database. I used the weight (2.6 lbs; 1179 g) and total length (17 inches; 43.2 cm) reported in the description. I estimatd the hilt length/blade length and proximal blade width from images taken with a ruler. Here are some basic photos: