[doecon]

Thanks for your advice, looking forward meeting some expertise, might even learn something along the way.

I do however think you misunderstood the aim of my answer. I’m not defending anything, but I do think its important to show additional material so everybody can make up his own mind.

About the dress thing, yes of course we all understand people don’t throw their Ivory or golden dresses (they sell them). As I mentioned its quite common (here) to change an old dress for a new one, to illustrate that most blades around, don’t come with their “original” sheath. You should have a look in Java, you’ll be surprised to see a good amount of small businesses creating new sheaths, handles and pendok. Mostly for the local market. It’s a cultural thing. We (westerners) see the half rotten sheath as a valuable antique, here (java) they mostly don’t.

Regarding the possibility of keris being fake, I do have some things to say. It takes a lot of prejudice to assume that a (any) 15th, 16th , 17th year old keris is beforehand, probably a fake. Especially when it concerns a “common” keris. Fact is that there is still plenty (luckily) of old blades available in Indonesia. It simply doesn’t make sense to “copy” or fake a 16th century blade, when there is enough supply of the original. Or when the model copied is not in high demand.

I do however get worried myself about the continuous number of sellers claiming centuries of ages for obvious new blades. To me this doesn’t make sense. A good old keris is a good old one, a good new keris is a good new one…