Sword 20: The Toronto Yard Sale Sword

1/22/2017

Information about Fake Hercules Sword 20 comes to us from Michael Castagne, who reports that he was given the sword around 2007 by a friend who purchased it for $5 at a Toronto yard sale.

I've added the sword (a "J") to the database, estimating some of the basic dimensions from the scaled images.

Sword 20: front of sword.

Sword 20: back of sword.

Sword 20: front of hilt.

Sword 20: back of hilt.

Sword 20: detail of Hercules' head and chest.

Sword 20: detail of side of hilt showing molding seam.

Alert readers will have noticed that I have added slots for Swords 22 and 23 to the database. Those are going to be interesting. My gut tells me we may be nearing another "tipping point" in the saga of the Fake Hercules Swords.

Oh wait, we're in a new era now so indulge me while I reframe the issue:

32 Comments

Peter Geuzen

1/22/2017 07:15:30 am

No deeper story on original purchase location/date? Was the yard sale vendor the original owner? Maybe we'll never know. The white and brown stuff has showed up now on a couple, which seems to suggest more than just coincidence. Is this original patina junk, a reaction in the original patina, or some other natural reaction happening to the alloy over time? Brown suggests rust which suggests iron but I don't think we have trace iron in the alloy (?). Just throwing questions around.

MIchael C

1/22/2017 10:49:13 am

Afternoon Peter,
Unfortunately, that's all i have to go on.
Yard Sale. 3 streets over from ours at the time.
We used to watch Gladiator all the time as roommates, on our HT.
We were young back then, fresh out of school, and decided renting a house together was the way to save up down payments, until we all got married and bought our own houses.
My one roommate, Martin, saw this during a front lawn sale and couldn't pass it up.
That was approximately 2001-ish.

On the testing side, I can confirm that there's a definite absence of any magnetic fields. Not too much iron in this one. There were only trace amounts in Brosseau's test of the Nova Scotia Sword.
(<1% also had tin, nickle, etc..)
I would tend to think this follows the similar composition of copper/zinc Brass of the others.
I'm not sure exactly how that one sword points to magnetic north.
Magical maybe.
Maybe it's +1 against Steel Dragons...

Peter Geuzen

1/22/2017 11:37:18 am

2001? Andy put 2007 in the database spreadsheet. Interested in having it officially tested (Andy may have already asked)?

Michael C.

1/22/2017 02:16:11 pm

Yep, around 2001.
By 2007, I had re-discovered it in one of my moving boxes.
It actually sat in the box for a number of years.
it's a shame i don't have any pictures of it at 2001. Just to see if it has aged.

Jonathan Feinstein

1/23/2017 04:49:35 am

Hard to tell from just the pictures, but my first impression was that this was not a good cast and that the brown gunk was some sort of filler that was then rubbed into the various cavities on the Hercules figure.

However, it might have just been added to make the piece look old though. Some other pieces seem to have what looks like artificial (green) patina applied in a similar manner.

Uncle Ron

1/27/2017 10:28:28 am

I think the brown residue is casting medium that has adhered to the metal. Sometime when casting some of the medium fuses to the metal and is hard to remove. Add that to the over-all look of this example which appears poorly cast (even by the standards of this group of objects) and I'd bet it is a "second" that got away from the shop.

Jonathan Feinstein

1/28/2017 06:16:18 pm

Uncle Ron,
That sounds like as good an explanation as any. Back during the Bronze age when I was casting replicas of bronze weapons from Israel (Normally I'd say StoneAge as it was in 1978-80, but.,, bronze), I made masters of the pieces I wanted in fired clay and/or wood and used damp sand molds to cast each piece, although some pieces were cast in soft firebrick I carved by hand..
There were a lot of failures, partly because the guy I was learning how to do it from only had a little more experience than I did, but we eventually got the hang of only dampening the sand just enough to hold together and to get it properly compacted. This is often called "Green sand"
Another problem is that each mold was usable once (the fire brick could produce several pieces but rapidly deteriorated as well. in retrospect lost-wax might have worked better for me although I knew the originals had been cast in stone molds - some have been found).
In any case, the damp sand peices frequently had imperfections which for my purposes I could grind off, but the raw results of those and of some of the firebrick mold pieces have some similarities to this particular piece. However I do not think either is how these were produced.

If forced to guess, I suspect molds were made from pieces of previous swords - such as the hilt and part of the blade cut off and the various blade types we have observed attached to make the mold. I believe a commercial mold is good for multiple casts (thus the multiple copies we have of some types, like the J-type), but even those do not last forever, Brass casting takes more of a toll on the molds than pewter, after all, so, yes, this particular sword might have been one of the last copies from it's mold.

That sort of serves as an explanation for the evolving blade size and shape (to simpler and smaller if our guess as relative ages is correct) and also would go a way toward explain the copy effect changes to the hilt itself, especially if the sword has been copied by a series of foundries rather than a single one. One foundry ought to have the same master each time they make a mold, but if these swords are knock-offs from the MoAFHS, then the hilts would be copies of copies as each new foundry produces the sword.

It does raise a question why several foundries might have copied such an odd piece, but I guess if tourists were buying them there might have been just enough of a market so long as only one was on display at a time? Or maybe I am wrong and except for Design Toscano they all came from the same foundry who, for some reason was making new models using previous ones for the masters? Neither notion satisfies me, though.

Peter Geuzen

1/29/2017 06:35:35 am

After a bit of reading and research, I think galvanic corrosion nicely explains the 'brown and white' from an electrochemical standpoint.

GEE

1/22/2017 07:42:15 am

Ha I love yard sales, never know what you will find! Sword #20. Nice work gentlemen.

Phillip

1/22/2017 10:42:42 am

Proof that Romans were in North America sometime in the early 21st century!

Only Me

1/22/2017 02:15:54 pm

Proof that Romans created yard sales! The sword means it's 100% confirmed!

For the best deals, only go to those yard sales that are authentically Roman. A 20% discount is offered for all items that are singled out by a lodestone-equipped sword.

Bob Jase

1/23/2017 08:09:00 am

Fleaus Marcetus to be precise.

RW Taylor

1/22/2017 10:44:12 am

This one has a lode stone that points to great deals.

Michael C.

1/22/2017 10:52:02 am

Nice!
I'll carry it around shopping with me, once i get a suitable scabbard.
Should freak out the security guards at the local mall.

Trevor

1/22/2017 06:14:10 pm

That's it! Mine's going into a yard sale this summer for $15!

Andy White

1/22/2017 06:28:40 pm

I'll give you $15.01. Cash money.

Mike Morgan

1/23/2017 10:10:58 am

Canadian or US $?

Andy White

1/23/2017 10:39:49 am

Namibian.

Graham

1/22/2017 10:16:31 pm

Looks like you are going to have to update the poster soon.

Peter Geuzen

1/23/2017 06:36:01 am

I started to play with it a bit on the weekend but when we have all the details sorted out up to number 23, I'll do an update. In current format I could maybe squeeze it up to 24.

Pablor

1/23/2017 02:36:26 pm

How do you know if the sword found on the yard sale is authentic? Clearly the real ones are pointing in the direction to Oak Island. You can easily find out with a google earth map, and remember to trace all alignment lines red.

Bob Jase

1/24/2017 09:13:19 am

Uh, Pablor, there are no authentic ones. Please catch up.

Michael C

1/24/2017 08:36:51 am

It IS authentic. An authentic yard sale sword.
I think my lodestone is broken though.
Mine just points me to Boston Pizza all the time.
Who am i to disagree with such a mystical decree?

Only Me

1/24/2017 01:28:25 pm

Your sword is authentic! I can prove it!

The lodestone points toward a pizzeria. Pizza is associated with Italian culture. The "original" sword is allegedly in a museum in Naples. Italy was part of the Roman Empire. 100% confirmed!

Disclaimer:
This is a tongue-in-cheek comment and NOT an endorsement of Pulitzer's claims.

Kill Bill

1/25/2017 11:02:10 pm

Andy are we still going to ignore the fact that all these replicas mention that they are models of an actual "roman dagger". Do you really believe all these swords you are finding just came into being all around the world with slight variations while all mentioning they were inspired by an actual ROMAN ARTIFACT, one that must surely has existed...

Only Me

1/25/2017 11:49:41 pm

First, being inspired by an actual artifact is not the same as declaring a replica sword IS the artifact that provided the inspiration. This is backed up by the fact the OI sword has been proven to be a replica.

Secondly, the existence of said artifact isn't evidence of Roman incursion into North America. You'd have to prove the artifact was discovered in North America for that to be true. Nobody has been able to do that.

Andy White

1/26/2017 05:47:44 am

Hi "Bill,"

At the risk of science-splaining, I'm going to lay this out for you one more time.

Proponents of the Oak Island sword as an ancient Roman artifact have asserted that there is an identical ancient Roman sword in a museum in Naples. Despite having made that assertion over and over again for a year now, none of those proponents has been able to produce a single shred of positive evidence to back up that assertion. So it remains just that -- an assertion with no evidence. I have just as much evidence for an assertion that the sword was made my unicorns.

Where does the burden of proof lie? This is simple: it rests with the person making the claim. I cannot prove there ISN'T an "original" sword in a museum in Naples, but you could easily prove there is one by simply producing positive evidence (i.e., a photo, an artifact listing, communication from the museum, etc.). Neither you nor any other sword proponent has done that.

Unlike the assertion that there IS an authentic sword in a Naples museum, the statement that there ISN'T a sword there is easily falsified: just produce evidence that there is one. This is the working hypothesis here, because it's falsifiable. Many of us have spent a lot of hours trying to falsify it by finding evidence of this "original" sword, and no-one has come up with anything. To the contrary, we've gotten communications from museums in Naples that there was never such a sword. As far as it's possible to generate positive evidence that something DOESN'T exist, we've done that.

Until one of you guys produces actual evidence of an original Naples sword, the simplest explanation is that all of the swords we've seen are modern. Several independent lines of evidence support that conclusion at this point. It could be easily falsified by producing evidence of an ancient sword that actually looks like these Hercules swords. So . . . go work on that and get back to us when you've got something to add.

Bob Jase

1/26/2017 08:55:03 am

http://www.ebay.com/itm/15-5-Full-Tang-Zomb-War-Hunting-Sword-With-Green-Nylon-Handle-Sheath-/222334394532?hash=item33c429a0a4:g:vSQAAOSw2xRYQv2z

Guess zombies must exist because otherwise this sword couldn't.

Jim

1/26/2017 09:28:44 am

The events described in The Lord of the Rings are true happenings. I have proof :

http://www.bladecenter.com/lordoftheringsswords.aspx

Also Star Wars really happened, else there would not be these replicas available, I mean they had to model them off real light sabers, correct ?

https://www.ultrasabers.com/category-s/70.htm

Jim

1/26/2017 09:54:51 am

P.S. Kill Bill, when you hear these swords speak to you, what language do they use ?

Peter Geuzen

1/26/2017 08:13:28 pm

Who cares or what difference does it make if there is a look alike antiquity somewhere, or 4, or 10, or one for every person on the planet? It makes absolutely no difference because the Fake Roman Sword from Oak Island is a proven fake. The assertion that the Florida sword is real, and a match to the Fake Roman Sword from Oak Island, is a perplexing conundrum for the assertors to say the least. It does in fact match the Fake Roman Sword from Oak Island based on the matching casting anomalies in the blade. The Florida sword is therefore fake - made from the same group type of molds. That leaves 8 more I think that Jovan claims are real. Personally I want to see all of them! Better yet, test everyone that Jovan produces. How many do we think Jovan will produce of the 8 remaining in his fantasies? I'm 'all in' that he will produce absolutely zero. Burden of proof thing, yah too bad, probably no swords forthcoming from Jovan unfortunately, but I'll try to stay optimistic. Admittedly he's busy bringing us the Arc of the Covenant (yes he has spelled it that way) so no big deal re the swords for now, I'm patient.

pandora one mod apk link

9/7/2018 06:59:48 am

You are so cool! I don't suppose Ive read anything like this before. So nice to find somebody with some original thoughts on this subject. really thank you for starting this up. this website is something that is needed on the web, someone with a little originality.

Sword 20: The Toronto Yard Sale Sword

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