Thoughts on this sword ?? Seringapatam relic ?
 

Hi,
saw this and was unconvinced that this was a relic of the battle of Seringapatam, but thought it possibly a really old sword. Forgot to get better pictures so bid 'lightly' and just lost out......maybe a good thing, maybe not. I wondered what others thought.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Antique-Battle...d=p3286.c0.m14

All comments, as usual, gratefully received

Regards David

Hi,
so please, can I assume that I would have been a mistake to buy this 'relic' sword ?


Regards David

David, I stay far, far away from things with such interesting, yet unprovable, provenance. :shrug:

Hi Andrew :) ,
Yes, very good advice.... but sometimes, just sometimes... you wonder if you 'missed out' on something good ....and I started to have that feeling with this one.

Kind Regards David

I know that this is an unfair generalisation, but eBay 'provenances' should be completely disregarded short of an item coming with a provable paper trail history.

Anything less is simply conjecture and to be frank, I've seen some completely crazy claims on ebay for items that couldn't possibly be authentic.

Looks like the sword in question might have been nice..... once, a very long time ago. But without some proof of its historical context its not really anything now.

My two kopeks,
"This Sword was Excavated from the area where the Battle of Seringapatam took place"
This really means nothing, just that it was dug up near something. The fact that this rare piece of history had no reserve and went for barely more then the postage suggests to me you made a wise choice in bidding light.

Thank you for your thoughts Gentlemen,
as I said before I did not fall for the 'story', but felt the sword looked interesting. I appreciate that without provenance, it's historical value is lost (in fact the only 'provenence' offered is the insinuation that the previous seller had stated that '... This Sword was Excavated from the area where the Battle of Seringapatam took place.')

I checked for info. on the types of sword used at Seringapatam and I could find no reference to this design/style of the sword in question.

Has anyone any idea whether there are similar/identical swords... and their origins. I am certain I have seen one very similar, but can't remember the details :o Thank you

Regards David

The hayamukhi style hilt was not as far as I know used by Tipu or any of his forces.
hilt looks 19th c.

Hi Jim :) ,
thank you for the ID of the hilt. Could you tell me which cultures used this type of hilt? Thank you

Regards David

Hmmm, weirdly, many years ago I had a sword with a lion shaped hilt that was allegedly Tipos forces. It had a cartouoche on the blade but I couldn't read it, I was never comfortable with it and eventually I ended up trading it back to the bloke I'd bought it from.
I think I'd feel the same with this one. Although in any large campaign there must be many varieties of design and weapons type used, I am suspicious enough to only accept cast iron provenances as gospel.