By fake, I indeed meant that they had been presented as old keris while they were actually recent ones (so i should be rephrasing into: how to distinguish a touristy keris from an original one?)
For the criteria of the ganja, well, I guess that this could still be considered as a good point to start with : if it is that hard to find some old keris, what are my chances to find one of those rare original keris without a ganja? If you can find of some other practical advice, please don’t hesitate.
Thanks also for the books, those in English should be especially useful since my knowledge of Indonesian is not good enough yet to go through an entire book!! i don't think gramedia's got anythg about keris, but i'll check 4 the encyclopedia...
As for the pics, no I didn’t buy those keris…it’s just that they didn’t look like the more touristic keris I saw previously. It’s nice to know the singa one could be an old one, even though the quality is poor..’gives some courage to continue looking around…expect new pics! (hope more interesting ones
)
michael