Pertinax,
I appreciate your experience "on the ground" in Africa. Valuable information indeed. However, as I mentioned in my first post here, these knives came from an ethnographic collection compiled over many years. Judging from several hundred items being auctioned from their estate, this couple new quality and rarity in the items they bought. They visited Africa numerous times also. Furthermore, the auction house specializes in African ethnographic items, and had known the owners of this collection for many years.
You may be correct, that these are simply inexpensive knives sold on the roadside to a couple of gullible tourists. However, I doubt it given the quality of items presented from their overall collection (which included many swords, knives, axes, etc., that fetched handsome prices at auction).
Ian.
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