Snobism and elitism are basic human behavior, so I've seen it appearing in all societies.
On legal responsibility - one can adopt NHTK strategy, by which one writes in papers "it is our opinion that this item ... ". Then the only way to sue is to prove that this opinion is not only wrong, but it was intentionally wrong. As far as I remember such thing was upheld in court only once when alleged director of alleged NBHTK-2 Eguchi allegedly misattributed his tanto, which he sold later for 50,000$
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I perfectly understand the problems with appraisal being introduced into community. Before this discussion I believed them to be minor, now when I think about this may be the real thing.
P.S. I'm surprised to know that there is such thing as organized European weapons collectors - I know there are some European militaria swords collectors, but I've never heard of a _living_ forum (swordforum with 1 post per month in its euro section is not really alive) or meetings of European sword collectors.
Which basically is due to my ignorance, but is there really a European sword collectors society a-la Nihonto ?