When I had money burning a hole in my pocket, I decided I wanted a samurai sword. There's a posh, high-end antique store downtown, and I figured if there's one place that'll have a bona fide samurai sword in my town, that's the place.
So I go in there and ask if they've got any samurai swords. They did. The guy started asking extremely specific questions about the sword I wanted, from specific sword smiths from the 17th century and what not. I was totally out of my depth so I asked for a run down about samurai swords (and WWII Jap officer swords).
He said basically Jap officer swords were cheap stamped, mass-produced jobs that went for $100 or so. Exception being the rare family heirloom samurai sword that the officer carried into battle and lost when he was killed. But these were rare as all get out. BTW all samurai swords were confiscated by the American occupation government.
They had two actual samurai swords that were centuries old. The cheaper one had beautiful tsuba (sp), hand guard, and grips. It was $2000. The other was a bare-stripped samurai sword. No handguard or sting ray skin grips, just the blade and the wooden handle. It was $5000. An honest-to-god samurai sword. He also had a CD rom of a book by America's leading expert on Jap swords, for $60. I didn't buy anything.