This Guide is designed for iaido practitioners on a budget and anyone else who is considering buying a shinken(sharp sword) or iaito(used by iaido practitioners, and are not sharp but are usually well made with quality fittings).

this guide is not designed for collectors of replica swords, which indeed may be sharp, but are wholly inapropriate and impractical for the iaido practitioner, and are also considerably cheaper, as a replica Katana can be bought on ebay for between £19 and £40 excluding P+P which can vary from £10 to £30 per item

I  am writing this guide because i have spent many many hours trying to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

I shall first consider a person who wishes to buy a shinken for practice for less than £200(which is possible, but like everythink you get what you pay for.)

if you type in Shinken,katana, or japanese sword(in the search box)you will be presented with hundreds of possiblities, you can quickly discount anything that isnt hand forged.

here is a list of what to look for and consider carefully:

1. the blade must be hand forged  
2. it must be light (most cheap blades are very heavy)a guide wheight is between 1.5 and 2.5 LBs

a little heavyer if the blade is folded, but for a first sword make sure it has a groove along the blade as this reduces weight(much better for swinging around during Iaido practice)

blade lenght wants to be between 27 and 28.5 inches for the average person(it all depends on how long or short your arms are)anylonger and you may not be able to draw it out(and put it back in) the Saya(scabbard).

avoid machine sharpened blades, only buy hand polished and sharpened to a fine edge with a genuine Hamon(temper line),

beware of adverts that just say sharp,sword because usually they are not very sharp at all, you want to read things like "hand sharpened to a razor sharp edge"and "genuine Hamon" as this shows that the sword has been forged using traditional japanese methods.

 every sword under £200 will either be made in thailand or china the quality is varying between, not bad value for money, and really awful quality.

the only real test of a sword is to hold it in your hand, and to look at it closely,feel the weight and balance, check the quality of the fittings,(the katana has to be fully strip downable, so you need to know that all the fittings are tight. the blade should be attatched to the handle by 2 pegs prefferably)

So taking all the above into consideration, you will see that there are always risks attatched to buying half decent swords on ebay, because you only have photos and a description to go on.

Always Contact the ebay member (or shop) with your requirments, at the very least it will cost you about £30.00 to return a sword if you find not suitable for iaido, as you will have to pay postage twice for the sword, once to receive it and once to send it back, some ebayers will charge you nearly £30 postage one way on a sword, so you dont want to be getting it wrong or it could end up as a time consuming and costly mistake.

one thing you can do is check out to see how many ebay shops are selling the same sword and compare listings, as they may give extra information about the item which could help you make a decision.

So far i have only discussed swords bought within the UK, if you buy from abroad, China or America, you will probably have to pay some kind of import tax, and the postage from china for a sword is extremely expensive (but the swords are cheap) up to £60 per item so you can imagine how you will feel when youv'e waited 3 weeks for delivery and the sword is much to heavy to weild comfortably, and you want to send it back.

So dont just read the advert, contact the seller, tell them exactly what you need, and what information you need  to know about the item.

only buy if your sure they know what there talking about, and you get the answers you need to but your mind at rest,

if in doupt dont buy, if you dont receive a reply to your request, Dont Buy. 

Good Luck and happy hunting for a bargain sword (cos they are out there)