Saki cups and bottles, safe bet or mine field?

[VPEP]

Hello all,
I am looking into adding a few Saki cups and bottles to my collection, but I could use some help. Can anyone recommend a few good reference books on them. Is the market flooded with fakes like it is with Japanese flags or is ebay still a good place to find these? I would love to hear from some of the more knowledgeable members on this subject.

Thanks
Vic

[JapanX]

More like "safe bet" than "mine field"

See http://www.imperialjapansakecups.com/books.html

[VPEP]

Thanks for the link. Those look like just the reference books I am looking for.

[Stu W]

Pretty safe bet and I found Dan King's book helpful.

Regards,
Stu

[GHP]

I guess the minefields would be the "Tokkotai" Kamikaze ones found on EBay.

See Rich Catalano's site; here's an example he shows that I've seen on Ebay:




Something else that has caused me to scratch my head in wonder is, sometimes I see the same seller (one in Hong Kong, for example) who has many sake cups with the same unit & design. I guess someone could uncover a box full of unpurchased sake cups .... but. [Hmmmm, come to think of it .... I don't think those in HK had the owner's name like they usually do.]

--Guy

[GeorgeP]

I think that sake cups are still mostly good collecting wise, not a lot out there that could mislead at this point, imo., aside from the above mentioned tokko-tai items and a couple of other suspect cups I have seen that looked like someone applied a marker to make the unit kanji on the interior of the cup. It seems like sake cups have taken a hit price wise over the past couple of years -- they seem to be cheaper overall for some reason. Unfortunately, the rare unit cups seem to be fewer and farther in between now. I can't remember the last time I saw a named balloon unit cup for sale. The rarer designs/units still fetch good numbers when sold. As to Guy's mention of seeing the same cups with same design/unit, dead stock of these cups surface from time to time. I remember seeing such deadstock in an antique store in Japan a few years back. The dealer had about a dozen or so porcelain cups individually wrapped in old newspapter all nested together in a single column tied in twine. He was busy unwrapping them and placing them in his display case.

Tom

[VPEP]

Thanks to everyone for all the replies. A few of these cups really add color to a Japanese display so I really appreciate all the input.

Vic