http://www.sword-buyers-guide.com/buy-sw...
That being said look at the following sites:
http://www.coldsteel.com/Category/4_1/Sw...
http://www.chenessinc.com
http://kultofathena.com/swords-japanese....
Cheness is excellent! I bought their 9260 Spring Steel "Tenchi" katana. It is excellent, well made, and cuts beautifully.
OH! And this is important bc 98% of swords are made of carbon steel and carbon steel rusts.
I recommend getting the following: Renaissance Wax from Kultofathena.com
http://www.kultofathena.com/product.asp?...
If your intent is to buy a display piece, then you are pretty much free to purchase anything that is within your price range. A lot of display pieces are constructed using stainless steel, which is very brittle and prone to breaking if ever used, but you need to be extremely cautious if you purchase a steel sword and have no formal training or knowledge of how to safely handle a blade. To be candid, anything under about $200 is not really suitable for actual use. Keep in mind that real newly made Japanese swords start out at around $10,000+, so to get a sword down to a price under $200 you have to skip/modify a lot of steps. However, as long as it is used for display purposes, you should be fine with whatever you chose. Display pieces can be easily found on major retail sites like Amazon or eBay. Functional swords can be found on sites like (in addition to the ones already mentioned) Nihonzashi.com, Bugei.com, handmadesword.com, swordnarmory.com (mostly display swords but has a few functional swords), etc.
Also, I would actually encourage you NOT to ever consider using it as a home-defense weapon, 1) because full length swords perform really poorly indoors since there isn't enough room to use them effectively, 2) not all states have a "Castle Doctrine" policy which allows a person to legally use lethal force against a home invader...therefore using a sword to defend your home could actually land you in jail, so if home invasion is actually a concern, then I'd recommend brushing up on self-defense laws in your area, and 3) trying to use a sword in an intense situation, such as against a home invader, without any training could potentially result in you getting seriously/critically injured yourself.
I think katanas are very beautiful weapons and i'd really like to own one to hang up in my room. I want it to be Somewhat authentic, well made and durable with decent cutting power. I'm not planning on using it or anything and i'm not expecting something extremely amazing that'll cleave somebody in two; but if theres an intruder or something i want it to cause some damage. I was looking at this blade here: http://store.japaneseswords4samurai.com/ss087wt.html
Its pretty cheap and looks very elegant. What do you think? Were are some good places to buy katanas?
