Michael, it sounds like what you are interested in finding are older keris. Perhaps you need to set your criteria there. Do you want keris that are only 19thC and older?Are early 20th C blades still acceptable to you? That kind of thing. I say this because newly made keris are not necessarily "touristy" as you describe them. Some, of course, obviously are made for the tourist market and are distictively lower in quality, but as i stated before, there are a great many keris being made today that even surpass the artistic quality of many "original" keris. The majority of these keris are never meant for export and are bought up by Javanese collectors. They are acid washed to look old not necessarily to fool anybody, but because this is the look that the present day Javanese collector prefers. It is the style of the day. There is much evidence that in the early days the Javanese custom was to polish the surface of the blade in the same manner that is customary to Balinese keris. This can be seen in examples that were collected by the Dutch many centuries ago. Now the rougher finished look is the preference in Jawa. This is only a problem when someone decides to sell one of these newly made blades as old. If you go on eBay you will find that the large majority of keris described as 19thC and older are actually these newly made keris that have been given this acid washed finish. I could tell you exactly which sellers do this on a regular basis, but then the moderators would have me drawn and quartered.
Yes, it is complicated.
